


anything, for a price

by framboise



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: (the bargain is marriage), 1920s, Alternate Universe, Angst, Arranged Marriage, Bad Decisions, Brothels, Complicated Relationships, Daddy Issues, Dark Jon Snow, Dark-ish, Deal with a Devil, Dirty Talk, Dom/sub Undertones, F/M, Family Drama, Gangs, Hades/Persephone vibes, Half-Sibling Incest, In which Sansa has a thing for her half-brother, Minor Character Death, Minor Jon Snow/Ygritte, Moral Ambiguity, Older Man/Younger Woman, Peaky Blinders AU, Possessive Behavior, References to Past Sexual Assault, References to Violence/Murder, Revenge, Seduction, Sugar Daddy, The Jon/Sansa in this is angsty and mostly unrequited, Unplanned Pregnancy, Unrequited Love, and makes a bargain with Petyr to save her family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-25
Updated: 2018-05-11
Packaged: 2019-04-16 19:05:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 28,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14171505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/framboise/pseuds/framboise
Summary: Everyone knows not to touch Sansa Stark, because her half-brother, Jon Snow, lead pack dog of the Starks, will kill a man for it. She's an old maid in waiting, the women of Small Heath have been saying since she was young.But business is bad and feuds are multiplying, the Starks are getting desperate, and Sansa knows that there's no better way to heal bad blood than with a marriage – and like hell she'll let her brothers choose a man for her. No, she'll make her own bad decisions before they can get the chance, thank you very much."You're just like him, you know, you think you own me," she murmurs, tongue loosened by the champagne, as Petyr nudges her to lie down on the bed.He leans over her, and even with his head blocking the light of the lamp she can see the shadow of his smirk. He taps the ring on her finger, kisses her jaw as her head tips back. "I do own you."





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a Peaky Blinders inspired AU taking place in early '20s Birmingham/London. If you don't know Peaky Blinders, I think the only info you might need is that the members of the gang wear razor blades in the rim of their flat caps, and that the Wildlings and Tullys are taking the role of the traveller peoples from the show, and the Dornish the Italians. There will probably be some historical inaccuracies in this fic but hopefully they won't bring readers out of the story too much. 
> 
> **Content notes: This is a Sansa-centric story with a Hades & Persephone/Deal-with-a-Devil vibe. Ned Stark was Jon's father in this AU. There are no major character deaths (i.e. Sansa, Petyr, Jon) but there are some minor character canonical deaths. There is no violence/sexual assault towards Sansa in this fic, but she remembers an attempted rape by Joffrey a few years before the story begins. Also, a general content warning for period typical attitudes, including the use of the term "gypsy" to refer to traveller people.
> 
> and if you want visuals for this fic, I made a graphic [here](https://framboise-fics.tumblr.com/post/173291123387/everyone-knows-not-to-touch-sansa-stark-because)

 

 

Sansa is trying to curl her hair with the new curlers she ordered special, trying to get her long hair to look like a bob, but all she's succeeding in doing is burning her fingers and getting increasingly angry. She's staring mulishly at the scissors on her table, thinking about cutting it all off, when Jon raps his knuckles on her door and enters before she can call him in.

"What are you doing?" he asks, sitting down on her bed, toothpick in his mouth.

"Margaery is having a party at her house tonight."

"Sansa, you know you can't go to that," he says, smiling at her in the reflection of her mirror.

Jon has a range of smiles and none of them are particularly easy or happy – they're sad or sullen or mocking, with the smile he wears right before he cuts a man especially unnerving. He's had a slow-simmering temper since he was young, but after their father died, and after Jon came back from the war, it seems to be always on the boil. She's never been scared of him, he'd die before he hurt her, at least physically, though he does a good job of hurting her feelings sometimes, usually by being over-protective.

"A girl needs some fun, some excitement. I'm twenty-two, Jon. Where do you imagine I'll find a husband, sitting on my arse here?"

Here being the tenement house next door to her family's betting shop in Small Heath, and a bedroom where she can hear the muffled shouts of the men as they work, the clinks of coins being counted, the ring of the telephone that just got put in, and on the rarest quiet mornings, even the scrape of chalk on the blackboard or the click of the sticky keys of the registers.

Jon shrugs. "Robb's the head of this family. If a man is interested in asking for your hand, he'll have to get his blessing first."

She rolls her eyes. "Not your blessing?" she asks, nudging towards the tension that has hummed underneath their every encounter since he came back.

If he knows what she means he doesn't show it. "I'm not the eldest," he replies.

But no-one except Ned, and Catelyn maybe, knew that for certain, Ned having brought Jon back to the house when he was a babe after his mother died in some poor corner of the city; and her parents are dead now so she can't ask them, can she.

"You'll stay in tonight, won't you," he says, getting up and stopping by the door, tapping a cigarette out of his pack.

"Of course, Jon," she says, smiling sweetly, because he's not the only one who uses smiles to get his way.

When he's gone, she opens the drawer of her dressing table and sets out her make up in a row on the top: blush, mascara cake and brush, powder with puff, the gleaming bullets of several lipsticks. If Jon thinks she's going to be cooped up in here then he's had his bell rung too many times in the ring.

Besides, it's been too long since she's slept with someone, her brothers have been far too vigilant lately. It's well known that they'll cut a man for touching her but she still manages to find her fun. Except it isn't much fun, really, it's just an itch she tries unsuccessfully to scratch.

She should have been married by now, settled with one or two babes already, happy and fat, or at least occupied and fat. She was supposed to marry Joffrey Lannister, like she had dreamed of since she was young, like her parents had wanted her to, her father with his ambitious plan to ally with the Lannisters from London and go straight. But then Joffrey had hurt her, almost raped her, and the Lannisters had turned and gotten her father arrested and hung.

She holds a simmering resentment that none of her brothers saved her from Joffrey, even as she knows that it's a stupid grudge to have, that they can't have kept an eye on her all the time. But that moment in a room off a party at Casterly Rock House, with him lying over her, his hands beneath her dress, tearing into her corset and scratching her skin, his mouth biting her neck hard enough to draw blood, when she had cried and panicked and tried to muster her frantic mind to remember all the things Arya had taught her about how to disarm someone, when she had felt so helpless and alone, has stuck with her.

She still can't lie under a man in bed, she has to go on top. The men seem to like that though, her looking like she's gagging for it, her taking control; but climaxing with them is never as good as it is when she's by herself, lying in bed with the covers over her head, breathing in hot air, imagining some faceless figure above her, and trembling as she muffles her noises in the arm flung across her face.

There's still that hope in her, isn't there, that romantic little girl that the world has tried so hard and failed to break. Hence her ongoing attempts to find Prince Charming. Surely an impossible task in the provincial wastelands of Birmingham - half the attraction of Joffrey was getting to leave this place behind and move to the bright lights and luxuries of London.

It was after Joffrey, and while her brothers had been in France, that she had started sleeping around. Harrold Hardyng had been the first, a lost rich boy, an American visitor with little knowledge of the seediness all around him, and he bored her within a week. Willas Tyrell, with his bum leg, from a family who specialised in smuggling jewels and exotic flowers, had been next and he'd been sweet, too sweet, and when she had felt the urge to twist his kindness, she left him, spooked by the darkness she saw in herself.

And then Jon came home, and he was different, and they were different towards one another.

He had almost died over there, and then been nursed back to life in a field hospital. It was friendly fire, Robb had told her later, because Jon never spoke of it, two traitors who had shot him in the back and were hanged for it.

He came back with the devil in him, she heard a neighbour say once, and perhaps it's true. Sansa's noticed that he doesn't wear his cross anymore, the one that was the only thing his mother left him, along with his curls and those full lips she finds her eyes caught on sometimes, the lips she's felt on hers twice before.

 

There's a commotion downstairs a few weeks later. By the time she reaches the parlour her brothers go silent, but she heard enough to know that they're arguing about something Arya did, about a fight she had with the Wildlings.

Their father had tried to shield Arya from the family business, like he did Sansa, but Arya was too wild for that, dressing in a cap like their brothers, showing them all up with her unerring aim with a gun. Her temper is even less restrained than Jon's, she's always scrapping and fighting.

"Where is she?" Sansa asks, sitting down next to Jon, achingly aware of the warmth of him against her side as she reaches for the whiskey bottle and he passes her a glass.

"Who?" Robb asks, closing the takings book in front of him, with its neat columns of figures in Bran's hand.

"Arya."

"She's off fixing her knuckles," Rickon says, his words muffled by his fat lip; his own knuckles bloody.

"Rickon," Robb admonishes.

"But everything's fine, right," Sansa asks, not knowing why she bothers because they always respond the same.

"It's under control, Sis." Robb says, like clockwork, lighting a cigarette and pouring his own glass of whiskey.

Business has changed, expanded, since their father died. Catelyn and Robb had taken charge and sought out new avenues and after Catelyn died of a poor heart, Robb took things further. Sansa's not an idiot, it was easy to see the increase in Stark men, the flat caps blooming out across the streets of Small Heath, the way people started to treat her with even more prurient interest, while also keeping their distance in case it got back to Robb or Jon that she'd been bothered. There's new names and new places that come up in the snippets of discussions she hears winding their way upstairs: Bordesley, Shard End, the Boltons, the Freys. Bran frowns all the time now when he works the books, fingers flying across the calculator; and when her brothers leave the house they do so with pockets fat with bribes, guns in holsters at their rib cages. And Jon is always returning late, and bloodied, Robb sending him out to put the fear of god into enemies and allies both.

"I was thinking of heading to the Penny Crush tonight, see the new Valentino, you fancy it?" she asks Jon.

He smiles, smoke curling from his mouth. "It's ages since I've been to the pictures," he says, and nudges her with his shoulder.

They trip there through the night, footsteps echoing around the damp street, people nodding to Jon or scurrying away. On nights like this she feels an inch of the power her brothers must feel when they walk into a room and see people tremble.

Their name gets them the best seats in the house too, the other seats around them vacating as whispers travel through the hall, _the Starks are here,_ and Jon kicks his legs up on the back of the seat in front.

She loves the pictures, loves the glamour - the dresses, the thick paint on both the lovers' faces, the dark gleam of his slicked back hair, the waterfall of tight curls down the heroine's back - but she loves the romance more, the way they clutch each other, the way they dance, the soft kisses he litters across her face.

"When are you going to take me to London," she says to Jon.

"London, eh," he says, putting an arm around her shoulder. "You want to see the bright lights." He turns to look at her, his dark eyes black in the flickering light from the screen. Is he looking at her lips, or her eyes, she can't tell.

"We should leave here," she whispers, leaning closer, her breath glancing across his face. "You and me, run from all this. No one would know us there, we could be anyone."

"Sansa..." he says, his nose nudging her cheek, and then he turns away from her. "Watch the film," he says, nodding his head, his arm still around her. "I know how much you like Valentino."

"I like _you_ ," she whispers even quieter, feeling stupid and young, and if he hears her he doesn't show it.

 

A few evenings later, she's in her bedroom dozing, the rags tight in her hair, when the front door to their house bangs open with shouts and cries, and she jerks up. She recognises all the voices except for one that's slurring and groaning.

She wraps a robe around herself and hurries downstairs, finding a huddle of men around a bloodied man that she realises, coming closer, is Jon, who's been beaten to a pulp.

" _Jon_ ," she cries, holding him by the head as his eyes roll and his mouth burbles.

"Got his bell rung," one of their men, Desmon, says.

"What happened?" she says, as Robb himself strides in the room, looking murderous.

"Bran," Jon slurs as Sansa tries to keep him from rolling from his seat. "He has Bran."

"Who does?" she asks.

"Baratheon," he says, a name she doesn't know.

"Who's that?" she asks Robb.

"Chief Inspector Baratheon. The police have him," another of their men, Jacks, says.

Robb sweeps from the room with some of their men, guns glinting from their holsters, caps on head. Sansa feels like her feet are stuck to the floor. She's useless, helpless.

Jon presses his head to her stomach, his blood bleeding into her nicest Chinese robe as she holds his neck and asks Robb's wife Jeyne to get the iodine, and some whiskey.

She tends to Jon, mothering him as his own mother never got the chance to, and by the time she's seen to every cut, Bran is carried through the door.

"They stole his crutches and made him try and walk, then they laughed at him," Meera, the girl from the next road who's been sweet on Bran for years, spits out as he's set down.

"Oh, Bran," Sansa cries.

"It's alright," Bran says. "I'm fine. Nothing broken," he says ruefully, his head flopping back on the arm of the couch.

 

Something is happening, something beyond the usual tiffs and arguments, the usual cock fights, and Sansa is worried sick; and like usual, they won't tell her anything. Bran getting roughed up, Jon with his head rung bad enough she was worried he might not get it back, having to hold him there in the seat as he gurned and groaned and vomited onto the floor. The Starks have had the police in their pockets for years, and now some new Inspector has arrived and swept that all away.

"We have it under control, Sis," Robb had said, the morning after. "Just a blip, the Inspector is all talk, he wants to work with us, he needs us."

She has a tail now, whenever she goes out, one or two of Robb's men who smile blandly at her when she turns round and curses them.

About a month in, she decides that her shadow needs an education in the finer things in life, and she a well-earned distraction, so she heads to the department stores and takes her time browsing their wares, lingering in the unmentionables department, fingering French lace. Then she buys a box of cakes and delicate Belgian chocolates and eats them slowly, lasciviously, as her shadow watches her from outside the cafe door.

It's afternoon when she gets back home, and she climbs up the back of the house to her bedroom, if only to piss her shadow off, and then gets into bed fully-clothed, screaming her irritation into the pillow.

She falls asleep even though it's still light and wakes to the sound of a smash downstairs. She jerks up and moves to her door. Another smash, shouts, the scrape of tables being shifted. Where the hell is everyone?

She locks her bedroom door and looks around for a weapon. The thump of tables being overturned, the sound of things being thrown and broken, laughter and strangers' voices. She strains to hear if there's boots coming up the stairs, her body trembling, a whimper stuck in her throat.

It feels like forever when they leave and she waits, head pressed against the door, for several long minutes, before she spits out a string of shaky _fuck_ 's.

"Anyone here?" a familiar voice calls out, their feet crunching the broken glass on the floor. She thinks it's Porther, a grizzled man who has been guarding the family since she was little, and she's scrabbling with the lock of the door when the whole building rocks with an explosion and she drops to the floor again.

When she makes it downstairs there's a small hole, large enough to fit two men walking side by side, blown into the back of the house, and Porther's body lying motionless nearby.

She turns around to survey the scene, feeling a hot anger inside of her. The intruders have been through everything with an unbridled glee, grabbing what they can. Every table has been knocked over, bar one. She walks closer. Four bullets standing upright. She picks them up. Four bullets with four names scratched on them, _Robb, Arya, Rickon, Jon_.

 

Later, once everyone is home from their trip to the races, and Sansa has been questioned and hugged tightly by all of her siblings, apologised to by an earnest Robb, after Porther's body has been removed and his dependents met with, after downstairs has been cleaned up, and as a bricklayer gets to work patching up the hole in the wall, Sansa leaves her room to find Jon sitting on a chair he's brought up from downstairs, guarding her door.

"What the hell is going on, Jon," she asks, kneeling down in front of him, holding the bullets out to him, "what are these? Why do they have your names on them?"

"Sansa-" he says, forehead creased.

"These are a declaration of war, aren't they," she says letting the bullets roll off her palm into his lap.

"It'll be fine, We've got it in hand."

"Liar. This on top of Porther, on top of you and Bran being taken in by the police. How soon will it before one of you dies, or before you go the same way as Dad?"

"We've got a plan."

"Well, what is it?"

He shakes his head.

"Jon," she says, standing up, bending over him. She holds his face in her hands, resting her forehead against his. This close she can almost taste his sour breath.

He pulls back and turns his head away, takes out a cigarette. "We're working on it, Sans," he says, using the name he used when they were children. "We've nothing to fear as long as we stick together."

She shakes her head and returns to her bedroom, slamming the door shut.

Her brothers don't want to tarnish her with the muck of their business, but she's already stained, she's a Stark for god's sake, and they won't let her leave the family, head to London and become someone new, she's kept here, palmed off with platitudes about family and safety, and for what?

Her family needs help but there's no one left to ask. Or there are people to ask but it would mean Robb swallowing his pride, it would mean going against the family code.

Sansa has an idea though, an idea that ticks like a finger she's trapped in a door, throbbing and keeping her awake.

Sansa remembers a man who had visited their house a few days after Ned died, arriving in an expensive car that drew a crowd of onlookers outside, wearing an expensive suit, slim, with a neat moustache and two wings of silver in his hair, and with a soft voice she eavesdropped on as he met with their mother in the side room with the door closed.

 _Petyr_ , Catelyn had called him, mentioning their childhood and his time spent with the Tullys. Sansa remembers too when he had left the room and found her there, the way his eyes had slid up and down her body, the way he had kissed the back of her hand and declared himself charmed to meet her, the way her mother had looked frightened for just a moment when she left the room behind him and saw him with her daughter, before Catelyn got distracted by Rickon appearing with a bloody nose, the way Sansa had turned to see Petyr pausing just before leaving the house to stare at her some more.

Later she learned that he was known by everyone else as Mr Petyr Baelish OBE, or Littlefinger, depending on which of his personas one was speaking of - the legal or non legal - and that he had holdings all over, including in Birmingham, a speciality in extremely profitable clubs and brothels, links to the Lannisters and the Arryns, and all sorts of alliances on top of that, connections that went right to the top, to the crown itself. He didn't get his hands dirty, she learned, but if he did he would be coated in blood for all the men he'd dealt with.

She had seen him a few times after that. At a benefit Catelyn had organised for the forces during the war, at Rackham's department store, at a party with Willas in London, and standing outside her mother's funeral, his face clouded by the smoke of his cigarette. And each time, except at the funeral, when he only watched her hungrily from afar, he approached her and offered a cigarette, complimented her on her dress or her hat, and flirted with her. She had been flattered despite herself, despite him being old enough to be her father, despite his smarm. She has always liked being looked at, being admired, and Arya has always mocked her for it, called her vain, or a vain little bitch if they're having a fight.

 _Arya._ Sansa is doing this for her more than anyone else, because her brothers have each other but sisters should look after sisters.

For the next week Sansa gets her head out of the sand once and for all and eavesdrops on all the business in the house, rifling through the books and receipts, asking Bran and Rickon careful questions. She lingers in the streets, pretending to be walking to and from errands, and she ventures into the bathhouse to eavesdrop on the gossip of all the wives and widows.

And when she's built up a picture of how bad things really are, of how all the guards that huddle at the front and the back of the house now can't do anything to stop what's coming to her family, she makes a decision.

She dresses up fancy, as if she's going out to a party, and then she takes the back routes to the nicer part of the city, where the buildings are pale and doors are manned by men with white gloves.

She's done her research, she knows he's in Birmingham at the moment, probably scenting the fresh blood of the Starks as they stagger wounded through the city with the pack on their heels.

"What are you doing out here, little wolf?" he asks, smiling around his cigarette, when she's been shown to his office.

"Shouldn't you be the wolf in this scenario and I be the little girl lost?" she replies.

He huffs a laugh. "You've always had sharp teeth. Do your brothers know you're here, hmm?" he asks, stalking closer. "Cigarette?"

"Yes," she says, taking the cigarette from him.

"Liar. They'd never let you come here, especially not by your lonesome. And at a time like this." He pauses, studies her. "Take a seat, please" he says, motioning to the seating at the other end of the room to his large mahogany desk.

She chooses an armchair so that he can't sit next to her but he pulls the opposite chair close enough so that their knees are almost touching. His eyes have been fixed to her since she walked in the room and it is such a hungry gaze she is almost embarrassed.

"Now, how can I help you, Sansa?" he asks, a noticeable sibilance to the way he sounds her name.

"What makes you think this isn't just a social call?"

He crosses his legs and blows smoke from the corner of his smile. "We don't tend to run in the same circles, sweetling."

"But you used to, didn't you, when you were raised with my mother."

"There's no need to call on old ties, Sansa, they have little currency now. But I am in a generous mood lately, speak your piece." He nods towards her and stubs out his cigarette.

She taps the heels of her shoes together, an old habit. "My family has a lot of bad blood, feuds with other families, poor investments."

"Yes, I heard. Robb Stark flexing his muscles and doing his best to dismantle everything your father built. And?" He's toying with her and they both know it. He wants her, his eyes are sliding up and down her body.

"You still have business, connections in Birmingham, don't you?"

"I do."

She licks her lips, reminds herself of the body on the floor of her house, of the row of bullets with the names of her brothers on them, with Arya's name.

"I'd like to find a way of healing some of the rifts, of making stronger alliances," she says.

"That sounds wise, and how do _you_ propose to do this, you who has no stake in your brother's businesses or any particular skills or indeed, useful knowledge."

She tries not flinch at his insult, knowing that she has the trump card here. "I've heard that marriage is one of the best ways to form an alliance," she says, pleased with how her voice doesn't shake.

"Marriage," he repeats, as if savouring the word, but she can see she has surprised him, she can see the way his knuckles are white around his cigarette case.

He sets the case down and reaches for her hand. His skin is soft against hers, uncalloused. "You'd like to marry me, Sansa? Usually it is the male party who does the asking, but you are a modern girl, aren't you, darling." He swipes his thumb across the back of her hand. His smile is exultant. "You make a bold offer, Miss Stark." He stands up and walks to his desk, sitting behind it. "The terms of this marriage?"

She follows him and takes the seat on the other side of the desk. He picks up a green apple from a tray of fruit and cuts slices off with a glinting silver knife as he listens to her talk; and for something to do with her hands she eats six grapes one by one, popping them between her teeth, ignoring the orange she so desperately wants because she'd have to lick the juice from her fingers afterwards.

She tells him the plan she has concocted: pay off the Wildlings who had been the Stark's kin before Arya went and fought Mance's son and blinded him in one eye, and who have sent the four bullets; get rid - in whatever permanent manner Petyr sees fit – of Roose Bolton and his two sons, who have killed three Stark men in the last month and are plotting a violent incursion into Small Heath, and who use threats and mercenaries to run their business so there'll be no fear of reprisals once they're gone; and have Petyr work his magic in the upper echelons and get Inspector Baratheon sent back to Ireland.

He corrects a few of her points, showing her once again how little she knows of the family business, how out of her depth she is. But she grudgingly appreciates the way he takes her seriously in this, despite the smile.

"So you agree with my terms?" she asks.

"Do I not get terms of my own?" he laughs. "The balance as it stands is _quite_ lopsided."

"Depends on what they are."

"Wise of you. I have three," he says, leaning forward over his desk. "One: you'll live with me, permanently, you won't run off back home once we're wed. Two: no opium. Three: you'll not bob your hair."

"My—fine," she says, feeling her cheeks heat.

They haven't really spoken of the obvious, that the real prize here for him is her, that this offer of hers only works because he's coveted her for many years. As pretty as she is, as delicious as it would be to marry a Stark girl, no other man would make this deal.

"I believe," he says, pushing his chair out without a sound, and circling the desk as she stands too, "that a kiss is customary to seal a marriage pact, is it not."

She licks her lips again and he looks at her mouth, eyes glinting. She lifts her face to his and shivers at the soft slide of his hand behind her head, at the way his fingers weave into her hair. She closes his eyes when he kisses her, his moustache tickling her skin, her lips parting. He tilts her head and deepens the kiss, his mouth hot against hers, and then he moves back.

"Good," he says, voice deeper now. "I have some arrangements to make, a dress to procure, that sort of thing," he says, leading her towards the door her with a hand on her back that feels like a brand.

He stops her there and turns her towards him. "Sansa, this might be a business relationship, but I want you to know that I will take great care of you. You think that you're making a sacrifice for your family, but you'll come to see that being my wife will bring many benefits for you. A better wardrobe for one," he adds, touching his finger to the lace on her shoulder. "All that money and they clothe you like this," he clucks his tongue. "As my wife, you'll want for nothing. You can see that I enjoy the finer things," he motions to his room. "I have an inkling we might share the same tastes."

She had been the one to drive the meeting at the start, the one with the real power, but now she can't help but feel like he has spun a web for her, like she's fallen neatly into his trap.

"My men will get messages to you, but I don't think it's wise to take our time with this. Your visit here won't stay a secret long."

"I agree," she gets out. "Time isn't something my family has large stores of."

"I imagine. I'll put things in place straightaway, get the pieces moving, don't you worry," he says, chucking her under the chin.

As she leaves his house and scurries her twisting route home, she thinks of the city like it's a board on a table with Petyr standing above it, shifting the pieces around. Of his soft fingers sliding a little figurine of herself towards the model of his house, of him changing his mind and picking her up and putting her in his pocket instead.

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

 

Sansa slinks around the house like a chastened animal during the next week, the days and the hours and the minutes counting down to her _wedding_.

On the fourth day - when she's practised packing the meagre belongings she wants to bring with her in a small suitcase for the fifth time, before unpacking it and putting the suitcase back on top of her wardrobe, in case someone sees it and asks questions - Rickon arrives back home shouting and crowing triumphantly.

When she comes downstairs, one whiskey bottle has already been drained into glasses and drunk by her brothers and the handful of Stark men who have just finished work for the day - Poole, Cassel, and the younger Umber among them.

"What's going on?" she asks, sliding past to perch on the edge of a table next to Jon, ruffling Bran's hair in passing.

Jon raises his glass to her and downs it, sucking his teeth. "Baratheon's been booted back to Ireland, looks like he couldn't rise to the occasion," he says and the other men cheer.

"He's gone?" she asks, mouth drying up.

"He has. Here," Jon says, shoving another glass in her hand.

She barely tastes the whiskey but she feels it warm her chilled stomach. "What about the Boltons?"

"What about them?" Jon asks.

"Nothing," she says, and starts picking at a nail.

"To the Garrison!" Robb calls, coming through from the next room, picking up the almost empty bottle.

"Come on," Jon says, arm around her waist, ushering her out of the door.

When she and Jon are near each other, he's always touching her, they're always being drawn next to each other, working their way through crowds so that they're side by side. And yet no one has ever said anything about it, about the way he watches her and she watches him. It's accepted that Jon is protective of her in a way he isn't so protective of Arya, and no one seems to guess that he's also doing his utmost to protect Sansa from himself too - at least that's what she thinks he's doing by denying any knowledge of their first kiss in the stables or their second and last kiss in the alleyway far too close to the Garrison for comfort, what he's doing by refusing to be more than brotherly.

The pub is busy, the drinks flowing free. Meera and Bran are canoodling in the corner; Robb is in the centre of a group of Stark men and he's in the sort of triumphant mood that means he's grabbing everyone he passes by their face, shouting nonsense words of celebration as they slap his back in return; while Arya smiles at him fondly and shakes her head.

Sansa is sitting between Jon and Jeyne, crammed in one of the booths, and steadily getting roaringly drunk. Jeyne is espousing the wonders of some new hair setting cream, and normally Sansa would be interested, but tonight all she's concentrating on is Jon next to her, is her family in this room, and how it's only a few days until she has to leave this all behind.

"You're drunk," Jon murmurs an hour later, turning from his conversation with Hullen about the new horse Arya was sent to buy from the Wildlings, the visit that ended with her slicing open Mance's son's eye.

"I might be," Sansa grumbles.

"C'mere, I'll get you home," he says, helping her up, holding her shoulders when she sways. "Am I going to have to carry you?" he asks as he guides her through the pub, nodding to Robb, who yells out a nonsense cheer, and Arya, who shakes her head at Sansa and tuts – and Sansa would give her the finger if she could just work her arms.

"Do you think of it at all," she says, as she and Jon walk back home, the streets shadowed, the factories still at work, "that night in the stables, do you think about kissing me?" she asks.

"Sansa," he says with a hiss.

"Well, do you?" she asks, spinning around and trying to touch his face as he holds her arms and pushes her away from him.

"You're drunk," he says.

"I think of it all the time," she says, as he leads her onwards.

It was a year after he had returned back from France, the both of them different, the both of them aware of some new hum of attraction between them. There were out in Small Heath and there was a sudden thunderstorm and they had run for the stables by the canal, hand in hand, laughing, soaked to the skin by the time they arrived. They were arguing about whose fault it was that they were out in the rain, pushing and tugging one another, and then he had her in his arms, pressed against the wall of one of the boxes, while the horses shuffled and snorted, and then they stopped laughing and her heart had fluttered in her chest and he looked at her, his eyes black, and then glanced at her mouth, and then he was kissing her, his mouth sour, her hand tight on the back of her neck.

And then he had refused to talk of it, refused to do more than look at her, and so she had goaded him, she had flirted with a couple of men in the Garrison, watched Jon get so furious he was almost snarling, and then she sauntered out of the pub while he attacked the two men so fiercely he still had sprays of their blood on the white of his shirt when he caught up with her and dragged her into an alleyway to kiss her, to swear at her while he kissed her, as she rubbed herself against him like a cat in heat, and then he pushed her away, mouth bloody from her own bite and spat out, _no more, we can't do this, Sansa, it's sick_.

And now she's going to marry another man and share the other man's bed, and when Jon finds out he's going to go crazy, and it's going to be such a mess. But he'll survive, that's the important thing, she whispers to herself that night as she lies drunkenly, and alone, in bed, the room spinning around her, they'll all survive.

 

It only takes her a few minutes to pack up her life in her suitcase, to glance around at the bedroom where she's slept nearly every night since she got too big for the basket on her parent's floor. The last thing she puts inside is a photograph of her parents, her most treasured belonging, and she allows herself to miss them, to feel the terrible aching loneliness their deaths left, and then she snaps her suitcase shut, and pushes that feeling back down, and then clambers out of the window and down the side of the house, dropping into the back yard under cover of darkness.

Petyr is waiting for her in a car round the corner, taking a risk with meeting her so close in person and not getting one of his men to ferry her to his house, but then she supposes that she's precious to him, that he's eager to have her in his possession.

"Miss Stark," he greets, usual smirk in place.

"Petyr," she says shortly, because like hell she'll call her husband something other than his first name.

He breathes a laugh and the car leaves, the shake of the engine mirroring her teeth that are chattering in nervousness, in shock at what she's doing, at the streets falling away behind them, at her running away from her family.

"Here," he murmurs, putting his coat around her shoulders and then his arm across that and she lets herself hide her face in his chest, taking comfort where she can.

They drive through the night down to London, to his house, his Mayfair mansion, and after a few hours sleep, alone, a maid helps her dress in the wedding dress he's had made, and they take a car the short way to the register office and almost before she can blink, they're wed, and they're having a wedding breakfast for two in a private dining room at Claridge's, and she can barely taste the food, the ice cream he's ordered her for dessert, and then they're back at his home, at her new home, and they're standing in his grand bedroom suite which is decorated in golds and purples and velvets and silks and is possibly the finest room she's ever stood inside.

"Now, we both know you're not a blushing virgin but I'd still like there to be something special about this, our first night together," he says, even though it's technically afternoon.

She rolls her eyes while he's looking down to take out his cufflinks but it's a facade of bravado, she can feel her limbs trembling.

"Do you have any preferences?" he asks.

"Whatever you like. Let's just get this over with."

He laughs. "The _romance_. Is that how you get all your boys, act like you couldn't care less what they did with their cocks, goad them to show off? That won't work for me, sweetheart. I want to know what you like."

"I'd rather we didn't talk about it beforehand."

"I'd rather we did. I don't want to do something you don't like, something that hurts you," he says, setting his cufflinks down on the vanity table, unbuttoning his waistcoat.

"You like hurting women?"

"Women's bodies are sensitive. What feels good for one woman won't for the next."

"How many women have you been with?"

"Much less than you'd think."

"That's not an answer."

"How many boys have you been with?"

"What makes you think they were boys?" she asks, crossing her arms.

"Because you weren't satisfied by any of them. Don't send a boy to do a man's job, isn't that what they say?"

"All this hot air. Are you stalling, Petyr? Are you worried that you don't look impressive underneath your fine clothes?" Her eyes slide to his crotch.

"Oh, my little wolf." He grins delightedly.

She feels a smile twitch her lips despite herself. "Do you like to be scratched, Petyr, is that what you're hinting at?"

He laughs and sits down on the edge of the bed to take off his shoes. He's in his shirtsleeves, and now his feet are bare and vulnerable.

She has only removed her veil, nothing more, the great froth of white muslin and lace and pearls down to her shins remains, neat white shoes with mother-of-pearl buttons peeking out underneath. This is the finest piece of clothing she's ever worn but that's not why she doesn't want to remove it – for she has already seen her great wardrobe filled with clothes he's bought for her which will be added to over the next few weeks, he's said, by seamstresses visiting at her leisure to measure her and ask for her opinions.

"Do you need help?" he asks, eyes glittering.

"Yes," she decides, placing herself in his hands.

He stands behind her and unbuttons her dress carefully. The fabric is so heavy that when he is done, the dress slips easily to the floor. He kisses the nape of her neck and she feels her stomach flutter.

He's provided her with everything she wears today, underthings included. His fingers are soft when they slip off the straps of her silk chemise and push it down, leaving her in her silk and lace brassiere and crepe de Chine knickers with the delicate embroidery that she ran her fingers over absentmindedly while she was getting dressed.

His hands move to her hair next, unpinning the curls, spilling her hair down her back, stroking it. He nudges her to sit down on the upholstered chair and kneels at her feet to take her shoes off.

"You still haven't told me what you like," he says. "Do you know?" he adds, which makes her bristle.

He sets her shoes to the side and slides his hands slowly up her calves over her stockings, his thumb finding the ladder in one of them that caught against the motorcar door this morning, so long ago now.

"I like to put my mouth on a woman's cunt," he says unabashedly. "Would you like that?" his eyes flick to hers, his hands are now on her thighs, stroking the skin just above her garters.

"Yes," she says.

Willas had offered to do that to her once but she'd refused, worried about it being too intimate, when somehow fucking wasn't. But if her new husband wishes to do that for her, she'll not turn the offer down, just in case he never makes it again.

"Good," he says, and slides her stockings down.

Realising that she's been sat there like a doll, she reaches behind her back and undoes her bra, dropping it to the side of the chair as his breath catches and his eyes grow hungrier.

"You want to do this in the chair?" he asks.

"The bed," she replies.

He takes her hand and pulls her up to standing and then he cups one of her breasts in his free hand, glancing his thumb across her nipple.

To hide how much that simple touch affected her, she starts to unbutton his shirt, avoiding his gaze, feeling the warmth of him beneath her hands as she slides it from his shoulders. She moves her hands to his trousers but he stops her.

"You first," he says and tugs her over to the bed, pushing her to sit on it and then to lie down.

He kisses her belly above her knickers and it makes her cunt clench. She looks down to see him watching her face hungrily. He peels her knickers off and she flops her head back on the pillow, embarrassed at him staring at her there.

"You've a very pretty cunt, Sansa," he remarks, and she's just about to push his smirking face away from her when he puts his mouth to said cunt, and starts working her as if he's kissing her mouth, his tongue curling and stroking, humming and sucking at her, and she comes with a shocked sob.

He props himself up on his hands, lips red and smile wicked, and then pulls down his trousers and shorts, and crawls up over her. But when he pushes his hips against hers she freezes, that old panic at having a man on top of her, and he notices.

"Not on your back then," he says, and turns them. "How's on your side?" he asks, pulling her body right against his, from chest to thigh, lifting her topmost leg up over his hip.

"Um," she says, getting her bearings at a new position, at how close he is to her, one arm beneath her head, the other hand gripping her hip.

If she wanted to she could give him one push and then he'd be on his back.

"Good," she says.

"Good," he smirks and kisses her.

He fits his cock at the entrance to her cunt and pulls her onto him, her hips open, her back arching at the stretch, as she muffles her moans in his collarbone.

" _Fuck_ ," he grunts.

They find a slow rhythm, and the rub of his pelvis there, the angle of his thrusts, have her coming again within minutes, with a whimper and her thighs jerking, as he swears and mouths at her jaw, and then he's coming too, pushing deep with a groan, fingertips tight in the flesh of her arse.

He turns onto his back and she lies over him for a moment, getting her breath back, hiding her hot cheeks, before standing up and retrieving one of the silk robes he bought her with Chinese embroidery on the back and a tasselled fringe at the knee.

She makes a face at the feeling of his seed slipping from her and he chuckles because he's still watching her; he's barely taken his eyes off her since they were wed.

"Not a fan?" he drawls as she grabs a cloth.

She put her diaphragm in before she joined him in the bedroom, the one from the doctor that Margaery recommended several years ago. They haven't mentioned children, that isn't part of the terms of this agreement.

"No, are you?" she retorts.

"I can't say I am." 

She snorts, and wraps her robe further around her, curling up on one of the large wingback chairs upholstered in velvet.

If he's disappointed she doesn't join him lazing in bed, he doesn't say, but gets up himself, putting on his own brocade robe with a purple silk shawl collar, wearing nothing at all underneath it.

She raises an eyebrow and he shrugs. "I'm only wearing it to make you comfortable. I'd be nude otherwise."

"Well, thank you then," she says and folds her feet beneath her on the seat.

He tugs the bell pull by the bed and when a servant knocks on the door he opens it and says, "Mrs Baelish and I would like some supper."

 _Mrs Baelish_ , she thinks and her stomach chills. Her family must have noticed that she's gone by now, but they probably think she's off with Margaery or another friend, and still in Birmingham. "I should telegram my brother."

"Jon?" he asks, as the servants carry in trays of sandwiches and aspic, along with a lemon sponge so tart she can smell the lemon from across the room.

"No," she says, "Robb."

"You can use the telephone."

"I'd rather not," she says, digging her fingers into the arms of the chair.

 

She wakes early the next morning, feeling a wave of anxiety at the reaction up in Small Heath to what she's done, at what the telegram they reply with might say, if they reply at all, and at who might take the train or the boat south to confront her in person, at the fight they'll probably have with Petyr's many guards, the bloodbath that will ensue.

Her bedmate must notice her twitching, because he turns and kisses her shoulder. "Alright?" he asks.

"I'm fine," she states.

"Hmm, I can get you to better than fine," he says, and she looks over to see his eyes glint before he slides beneath the covers and sets his mouth to her cunt and she finds herself not displeased with his method of distraction, with how he makes her come twice, her hands tight in his curling hair, his own hands holding her thighs open.

 _Fuck_ , she mouths, staring at the swirls of plaster in the moulding of the ceiling, her back stuck to the sheets with sweat.

Well, at least she's chosen a generous husband, she thinks with a twinge of hysteria. The thought comes back to her later when another maid helps her dress for the day, as Sansa stares at all the dresses, the blouses, skirts, jumpers, robes and jackets lined up neatly in her mammoth new wardrobe; as the maid helps her do up the fiddly clasp of the gold bracelet Petyr set out for her this morning, with matching gold and emerald earrings.

"I'm taking you to see my country seat, get us out of the smog of London," he says as he joins her in the bedroom, nodding towards the maid who is filling a new suitcase for Sansa.

Is there nothing she has to do for herself now? Maids to dress her, to pack for her, to cook and clean; and a husband to make decisions. But after having made the decision to marry him, to offer herself up as a way of saving her family, she finds herself willing to be led for a little while, still dazed by what she has wrought.

"You want to show off to me, is what you mean," she replies.

He laughs. "It's good to know that marriage hasn't filed down your teeth, little wolf."

He drives them there in his car which is far finer than anything the Starks make in their factory, his hands in butter-soft leather gloves on the wheel.

She studies his profile as the scenery whips past. She can see the tiny scar from the ring in his earlobe. "When did you take the ring out?"

"When I came to London."

"You changed your accent then too," she says.

He smiles at her. "That I did. Just as you change yours depending on the company you're with."

"I don't."

"You do. I've spoken to you at parties, you talk differently in London."

She shrugs, embarrassed.

"Being able to change yourself to fit your surroundings is useful, it's something I admire about you, Sansa."

"So you came down to London," she says, after the car turns onto a winding lane, "you left your gypsy past behind."

"The Tullys were kind enough to foster me but at a certain age I realised that it wasn't enough, the camps, the horses, Birmingham."

She grudgingly likes that she can ask him questions and he won't be put out by it, like her brothers can be, he welcomes her curiosity, although there's some things she doesn't want to ask yet, that she doesn't want to know.

"But a fosterling to this," she says, motioning to the country estate that appears through the trees. "How did you do it?"

"By making friends in the right places, by being indispensable," he says, turning into the drive. "But mostly, by moving numbers around."

The car stops and he gets out, circles it to open her door for her, to take her hand as she rolls her eyes. He kisses it, smiling at her.

She stares up at the house, like something from a novel, counting the floors and the rooms.

"What are you searching for?" he asks at her side.

"For the room with the bodies in it."

He puts an arm around her waist. "No bodies here, no blood. Clean hands, Sansa, and strong doors that don't get knocked in," he says, as they enter the house, "professional guards armed with the best guns. I heard about the attack on your home, that'll never happen again. You're safe with me."

It's true that she's had nightmares since that burglary, and the explosion, since finding Porther on the floor; that the last few nights she spent at her family home were sleepless ones. She certainly slept well last night but whether that will continue, whether the size of his house and the make of his guard's guns will make a difference is yet to be seen.

He gives her the tour and she is duly impressed. Room after room after room, each more luxurious, refined, than the last, and all of them so clean and neat it seems like they've never been used.

"Do I own this house now too, since we're married?" she says, looking out of the window from the top of the entrance hall at the extensive grounds.

She flushes slightly when she turns around and sees him smirking.

"You do," he says, moving next to her, kissing her cheek, his mouth landing just next to hers so that the very edge of their lips touch and then pulling back, watching knowingly as she licks her lips.

"Is that a trick you picked up from your whores?" she retorts.

"Sansa," he clucks his tongue. "So cynical. If you wanted a proper kiss, you need only ask." He cups her face and kisses her heatedly before she can say something else, and her eyes flutter shut.

When he kisses her, touches her, she doesn't think of Jon and of what she's done, her mind quietens to a low hum. Is it just because it's new, or will this continue? If so, that'll be the real trick.

"I forgot to give you your other wedding presents," he says, and pulls her by the hand down the stairs, leading her out of the back door and into the bright light of a spring day, the green of his immaculate grounds stretching out beyond the balcony.

"Two of the gifts could not be wrapped, I'm afraid." He takes two cigarettes out of his case and lights them both in his mouth, handing her one with his slim fingers. In the light of the day she can see the flecks of grey in his neat moustache, the dark rim around his grey-green irises.

"Oh," she prompts, inhaling a lungful of smoke.

"My men have paid the Wildlings a substantial amount of money and their feud with your family is now over, and Roose Bolton and his sons were taken care of last night, permanently."

The smoke stutters out of her mouth. "Thank you," she says.

He chucks her under the chin. "Anything for my little wife," he says but she can't even roll her eyes, she feels stuck to the spot.

Just like that, he had snapped his fingers and removed the three largest dangers to her family. Just like that, and she's now his wife.

"Do you want to see your other present? It did come in a box, but a rather large one."

She holds her arms around herself, feeling almost exposed by all the open space of the grounds as he takes her to a stables that looks marginally more untidy than the house.

"She's yours, technically they all are," he says as they stop in front of a pale horse, an expensive horse.

A horse just for her that won't be raced or sold or used for fleeing crimes; a pleasure pony, just like the one she had always begged her father for, so she could braid ribbons in its mane and take it on walks through the woods.

"Arya and Jon are the real riders," she says.

"You don't ride at all?" Petyr says, "You, a daughter of Catelyn Tully, aren't fond of horses?"

"You don't need to buy me, you know," she says, almost petulantly, putting out a hand for the horse to sniff. "I'm already yours."

"You are, are you," he murmurs, knuckle stroking her cheek.

She turns her head away. "So what does one do for fun at your country estate then," she asks, eager to change the subject.

"Well I do own a rather large number of comfortable beds," he says, following her out of the stables. "I've been known to do a spot of shooting too."

"Let's do that," she says, eager to stay outside and avoid the temptations of his _beds_.

He has his men prepare the rifles, and strips off his coat to leave him in shirt sleeves and a slim waistcoat, gold watch chain glinting in the sun.

"Do you know how to use this?" he asks her, handing her the rifle.

"You think my father wouldn't teach his daughters how to shoot a gun?"

"I don't think you really want me to share my opinion on the great Ned Stark—no waving that about, Sansa, if you want to kill me you'll have to do it slowly with a dagger in the old way."

"Some might say you're foolish for even trusting me with a gun," she says, pointing it at the undergrowth, looking down the barrel.

"You need me alive for the terms of our marriage to be upheld. And besides," he says, closing his hand around hers on the gun, "You're not the kind who does the killing, you prefer to give the orders and watch from afar."

She's about to say that she's never been involved in that side of her family's business before she remembers that she's standing here now because she made such an order, that several men are dead because of her.

He looks at her knowingly and she passes back the rifle, and then the beater flushes a pheasant into the sky and Petyr hits it with his first shot.

 

"Am I not distracting you from your work?" she asks him that afternoon.

They're in one of the bedrooms, the one as large as her family's whole betting shop, where the clothes the maid packed for her have been hung up on hangers scented with lavender.

She's perusing them; the dresses - for day and night; with beads and bows and lace and embroidery, fashionable dropped waists and higher hems than she's been brave enough to wear in Birmingham - the silk blouses, the skirts with flounces and ruffles and pleats, the fine wool overblouse, the blazer coat with its fur trim, the velvet cape, the brocade kimono jacket, the furs; while he sits in an armchair watching her, the smoke spiralling up from his cigarette.

"Nothing is more important than spending time with you."

"What are your businesses exactly?" she asks, fingertips catching on the sequins of one particular pink dress.

"Hmm," he says, stretching his feet out. "Manufacturing, import and export, racing, bars and brothels, money-lending, accountancy, property, politics..." he trails off.

"You've forgotten murder," she says, turning around.

He laughs a breath. "I'd wager I've killed less men than your brothers have, I've always found bribery and blackmail to be more conducive to success. But my businesses are separate from my home life, Sansa, there'll not be people pounding on the door looking to place bets or turning up drunk and bloodied."

He stands up and walks closer, eyes fixed on hers. "To raise children in a home like that," he clucks his tongue, and strokes a hand down her arm. "It pains me to think of you there, in some cramped little room, your brothers running wild, your father busy with his men and with such little time for a well-behaved girl like yourself."

"Don't talk about my father," she says, hating the bruise he's pressing on.

"As you wish," he says, stepping back, not looking contrite at all. He nods towards the dress she's still clutching. "You should try it on. "

"With you watching?" she says tartly.

He shrugs and smirks. She could ask him to leave and he would, but she'd rather have him sit there and watch her and be frustrated.

"Alright," she says, and starts to unbutton the dress she's currently wearing, a forest green number with a pleated skirt.

It falls to the floor in a heap and she steps out of it.

"Hmm, I think this pink dress is too thin for a chemise underneath, what do you think?" she says innocently, turning on the spot, catching a glimpse of his hot eyes, his wicked smirk. "Yes, I think so," she says.

She peels down the straps of her chemise and shimmies out of it, the silk cool as it slips over her skin.

"Oh, and I'll need to change my shoes, won't I," she adds, bending at the waist so that her lace knickers ride up, listening to his breath catch.

Once she has her shoes buckled, she turns around, and watches as he moves a hand to palm his cock through his trousers, his eyes half-lidded. The power she has over him makes her stomach heat. He seems to know that one word from him will end this show so he wisely stays quiet.

She takes the dress from the hanger, its sequins shimmering in the light, and pulls it on slowly, buttoning it even slower, smoothing her hands down every curve as if to settle the fabric.

"Do you know," she muses, "I think I'm peckish now. I'll go downstairs and ask the housekeeper if there's anything prepared."

She sweeps over to the door and stops at the threshold. "I'll tell her that you're momentarily indisposed, shall I," she adds, eyes sliding to the hand on his crotch, and leaves the room to his delighted laughter, feeling an answering twitch at her lips.

 

After dinner, they return to the bedroom and he helps her undress and then tugs her down onto the bed. She's not going to deprive herself just to make some point, she wants to get out of her head, she wants to feel good, and he's more than willing to help her, dedicated in fact, she thinks, as he hauls her into his lap and palms at her arse, sucking at her nipples with the occasional scrape of teeth that makes her hips twitch.

"Are you wet?" he murmurs, and slips the fingers of one hand underneath to play with her cunt. "Oh, you are, aren't you, darling," he says, smirking at her as her cheeks flush, as she clutches at his shoulders.

He tugs down his shorts and positions her over his cock, holds her waist as she sinks down with a groan.

"There you go, that's what you needed, isn't it," he says, voice low.

She bites her lip on a whimper. He feels thick in her, hot. She grinds her hips as he guides her with his hands, as he mouths at her neck.

He leans back as she moves faster. "God," he says, "just look at you." He runs a hand through her hair, pulling it over her shoulder.

She presses herself against him, hoping to distract him from talking so much, but all it does is move his mouth closer to her ear, the hum of his words making her shiver, making her breath catch.

"You feel so good, Sansa," he says, "so tight."

Her hips stutter.

"You should be in the pictures, you know. These legs," he slides his hands up her thighs, "these tits, this tiny waist."

He grunts and starts to thrust up harder, hitting her just where she needs, as she muffles her whines in his neck, her fingernails digging sharply into his back.

"There you are, little wolf."

"Shut up," she moans and his laugh is cut off by the roll of her hips.

He settles back against the headboard and the angle of his sharp thrusts, his thumb on her clitoris, has her coming with a short cry, as he keeps her hips locked to his with an arm around her back.

"Look at me," he says, breathlessly, as her thighs keep trembling.

She does, feeling pinned by his unblinking gaze, but when he moves his thumb again her eyes flutter shut.

"Good girl," he murmurs, sliding a hand up her side, and her head tips back, the world beyond the room forgotten.

 

The next morning, the bed is empty. She wraps a robe around herself and leaves the bedroom, hearing the murmur of his voice on the telephone drift up from downstairs.

She walks along the corridor, peering into the other rooms, touching wallpaper and polished bedposts, brushing her hand down heavy velvet curtains, her feet silent on the thick carpets.

She tries to picture her family here - Rickon racing along the hall, sliding down the banisters; Arya kicking her feet up on the mahogany table in front of the couch; Jon sleeping on a four-poster bed with a mattress so deep he complains he can't get up in the morning.

They'd not know what to do with themselves here, but neither, she fears, does she. She'd dreamed of a large, grand, house where she'd not be woken up by the noise of footsteps clumping through the door, by shouts from her family and cries from the bookmakers, but now that she's here, now that she's got her wish—

She stops in the furthest room, the quiet pressing in on her, and then turns and hastens along to the stairs to join her husband for breakfast.

 

They return to London the next morning and Petyr leaves that same afternoon on a business trip.

"You can come with me, if you like, I'll put you up in the best hotels, we'll go shopping together," he offers. "Or you can stay here, the house is yours, the servants are at your beck and call, as are the drivers, and I have accounts with all of the department stores. Your choice."

"I'd like to see more of London," she says, eager for some time apart from him, from his absolute focus on her and how seductive it is.

"Of course, darling," he says, and kisses her on the cheek before leaving, two armed men following in his wake.

Soon after, as she sits in the parlour, the ticking of the grandfather clock loud, her body restless, a maid enters.

"A telegram for you, ma'am," she says, with a bob.

"Thank you," Sansa replies, and takes it from her gingerly.

It'll be from her family, she thinks, a wash of anxiety flooding down her spine. They'll all know now what she's done. She's been trying not to think of it, Robb ranting and raving, Jon bloodying his fists against a wall or a face, Arya with something cruel to say on her behalf.

She tears open the envelope and takes out the telegram.

Arya wrote it, and Sansa can feel her sister's scorn in each sentence, but it's the message itself that has Sansa sinking into the armchair in wrenching disbelief.

_Dear sister. Jon got married. You should have been here._

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

 

 

"What have you done?" Jon says to her, he says to _her_.

He's caught her just outside the door of the mansion, coming back from the fancy Parisian bakery round the corner. She could have got her cakes delivered of course, or had a servant out to fetch them, but with Petyr away the house is too quiet, and she hoped to remedy her unsettling loneliness with a walk outside.

She glances over to see the guard leave the front door of the mansion and walk towards them, the glint of his piece under his coat, but he halts at the gate.

"Jon—" she says.

"What have you done, Sansa?" His eyes are black, his jaw is set.

"I made a deal."

"For what, new dresses?" he asks, with that cruel smile she hates.

She shakes her head angrily.

"What did you make a deal for?" he asks, almost mockingly.

"The Wildlings, the Boltons, Inspector Baratheon," she counts off.

He laughs bitterly, but there's a desperation underneath. "What the hell are you talking about. You're better than this, Sansa. He sold you a crock of shit and you ate it up."

"You're alive because of me," she says and crosses her arms. She feels sick to have him here like this, to have him know what she's done, that she's slept in another man's bed.

"You tell yourself whatever helps you sleep better," he says. He glances behind her at the guard and a snarl lifts his lip.

"You think the Boltons all met coincidental accidents," she says, "that Inspector Baratheon left of his own accord? You think the Wildlings would have accepted a _marriage_ as amends for Arya blinding Mance's son? How is your wife, by the way?" she spits out.

He closes his eyes, the lines on his forehead shadowed by his cap.

"She's a Wildling, does she have red hair?"

He rubs his beard. "You know Robb wanted it to be you who married into the Wildlings, who joined our families," he says, "but we couldn't find you."

If he's trying to say that he saved her from Robb's marriage scheme, or that _she_ is responsible for Jon marrying another woman, then he can shove it up his arse.

"Robb can go to hell," she swears.

Was that all they wanted her for, a bargaining piece? She might have made a similar deal with Petyr but it's her right to make her own bad decisions, isn't it, that was her choice, and she didn't end up in a wagon in the camps tending to some bore of a husband, while Inspector Baratheon arrested her brothers and sister and had them hung, while the Boltons muscled in on Small Heath and killed any Starks remaining. The marriage she chose stopped all that, she didn't sell herself off to the lowest bidder, she aimed right for the top.

"You shouldn't have done this, Sansa," he says, mournfully now, quiet and low like she's one of the horses he tends to. "We stick together as a family, we don't go off and make deals with strangers. Pack your stuff and come home with me, we can make the next train if we're fast."

"I can't."

"Why? Do you love him?"

" _No_."

"Well then." He opens his hands.

"I made a deal. I married him and he wants me to live here with him, I can't be his wife if I'm up in Birmingham."

"Exactly."

"Jon."

"So you want me to kill him then-" he says, lifting his chin.

" _Jon_ ," she says, looking back at the guard, looking around for the other guard she knows must have followed her to the bakery.

"This is a mess of your own making, Sansa," Jon says in a soft voice, bringing his hand to cup the side of her face. "You should have come to me before you agreed to this, you know I'll always look after you."

She feels such a sad, wanting ache. He smells so familiar, like family, like home. "Not if you're dead, you won't," she says.

"Come back, Sis. Come on." He holds out his hand.

Go back to Birmingham as his sister, where she'll have to watch him with his new wife, as the protections Petyr put in place collapse and her family dies. It's an easy choice.

"I made my bed," she says.

"Aye, that you did. I'll see you soon, Sansa. And tell your _husband_ to watch his back."

"Jon-"

But he's gone, walking away from her.

She stalks inside past the guard and then up to the bedroom, slamming the door closed, screaming and not caring if the servants hear, if the neighbours hear, if Jon hears from streets away.

When Petyr comes home she's sitting in the drawing room, staring out at the dark room.

"I've heard we had a visitor," he drawls, turning the lights on. "And that some charming threats were made. I wasn't expecting such a warm welcome to your family."

"Did you have anything to do with this?" she demands.

"You said nothing about arranging or preventing other marriages in your terms." He lights a cigarette. "I'm not god, I can't stop every man from making foolish decisions."

"You're a liar." The heels of her feet stamp the floor. "You did this to hurt me."

"What, found your brother an attractive young bride? How despicable of me if I did," he says, sitting opposite her. "This was all Robb, sweetling, and you know that it was you they were trying to marry off, don't you? The Wildlings like to marry their sons off young, and for your family, giving up a daughter who wasn't connected to the business would be preferable, wouldn't it? Rather than having a Wildling live with them and spy on everything. Besides," he says, shifting his shoulders on the seat, blowing smoke at an angle, "it's good for your brother to marry, to settle down. One does hear stories about him and his wildness. Surely you didn't expect him to remain unmarried forever? And whyever would you want that, hmm?"

She stares at him balefully.

"Now, I got you some presents while I was away."

"I don't want presents."

"Oh, you don't, do you," he says archly. "Well, I shall save most of them for later, but for now," he puts his hands in both pockets, and crouches down in front of her, "pick a hand, little wolf," he offers, holding out his fists.

She rolls her eyes.

"Go on, pick a hand."

"Both," she says sullenly.

He laughs. "That's my girl." He opens his hands to reveal a long string of pearls in his right and a silver necklace with a large diamond pendant in his left.

She feels her own hand twitch towards them unwittingly and he gives her a knowing look.

"I won't love you, Petyr, no matter how many things you buy me," she says pointedly.

"Love wasn't in the terms of our agreement," he replies with a shrug of his shoulders.

He leaves the room with a kiss to her forehead, and a promise that she'll get to open her other gifts later, and she's left in the quiet with the two necklaces, their shimmer and shine almost obscene, and with the ache of her encounter with Jon.

 

The next evening, as she's completing her toilette at the dressing table and Petyr is across the bedroom unbuttoning his waistcoat, he remarks, "There was a series of incidents early this morning, explosions."

"Where?" she asks, brushing long strokes through her hair.

"At three of my premises near Poplar Dock. The guards described the same figure, in a cap, at each place, one after the other."

She puts the hairbrush down with a slight clatter.

"You look worried," he says, voice smooth as ever, coming to stand behind her, "If you think I'll be angry at you for what your brother did, what any of your family do, you're mistaken, you're not responsible for them." He puts his hands on her shoulders, strokes his thumbs across the lace straps of her nightgown as he meets her gaze in the mirror. "And if you're worried that I might concede, that anything he might do, any number of explosions and strikes and violence, might persuade me to give you up, then you needn't worry, sweetling." He bends down to kiss her cheek, eyes still fixed on hers and she feels her stomach quiver.

He moves across the room to hang up his waistcoat, and then removes his cufflinks. "Such recklessness though," he muses, "do you think Robb knows what your brother planned?"

"I don't know," she says, mouth dry as she rubs cream on her face and hands.

"A loose cannon like that—" he clucks his tongue.

"Don't hurt him, Petyr," she says, turning around on the padded seat.

"I'm not going to hurt him," he says, sitting down to take his shoes and socks off, "that would hardly endear me to you, would it, to injure members of your family."

He takes his trousers off next, and his shirt and shorts, dressing for bed in a pair of silk pyjama trousers. He's particular about his dress in a way her brothers never were, and it should make him womanly, but it doesn't.

"Was it a lot of damage?" she asks tentatively, as she slides into bed.

"A few thousand pounds worth," he says nonchalantly, turning off the light, and getting into bed beside her, pulling her body into his.

 _Thousands_ , she thinks, tipping her head back as he kisses her neck softly.

She knows that what she should be doing is pushing him away, is refusing to share a bed with him at all, but she likes the way he touches her, the way he makes her feel, makes her forget.

He strips her of her nightgown quickly but everything else he does is teasing and slow; murmuring filthy things in her ear from behind, stroking her gently, entering her finally after she's begged for it and then thrusting lazily, bringing her to the edge and then pausing, his hands fluttering over her middle, her cunt, until she's sobbing and finally coming, but he's worked her up so much that one orgasm isn't enough, and she throws her hand back and clutches at his hair, tugging him into her, whining for more.

He's mouthing at her neck, his hands tight on her hips, when his teeth graze her skin and she freezes.

" _Stop_ ," she says, voice garbled, and he pulls out straight away and shifts back on the bed, turning on the lamp.

She turns onto her back, her breath shallow, hand rubbing the part of her neck that he touched with his teeth, trying to rub away the feeling, trying to rub away the memory of Joffrey.

He gets up from the bed and she watches him looking for a lighter on the dresser. "Was it the teeth?" he says, his back to her.

"On my neck, yes," she replies.

"Is there anything else?" The click of his lighter, a puff of smoke exhaled.

"Someone on top of me, or my clothes being ripped," she says after a pause, staring at his back, trying to concentrate on him instead of the prickling on her neck, instead of how sick she feels.

He shifts on his feet and nods but he's still facing away from her. If this was Jon she was talking to, Jon would've sworn, he'd have cupped her face in his hands looking so sorrowful she'd not be able to bear it, he'd have picked up his gun and cosh and barrelled out of the house to enact revenge and get himself killed in the process.

But Jon doesn't know, none of her brothers do. Only her mother knows, _knew_ , because it was Catelyn who found her, bruised and shaking as Joffrey stalked off to join the rest of the party, calling her a tease after Sansa had finally fought him off.

Petyr turns, his face inscrutable. "Cigarette?" he asks.

"Yes, please," she says, pulling the covers up to her armpits, shuffling up the bed so her head is propped up.

"So polite," he teases gently, coming to sit next to her on the bed, passing over the cigarette and watching her.

She studies him as she inhales. He's naked but no longer hard, his hair curling like it does when he exerts himself. She shivers at a sudden chill.

He strokes a knuckle down her cheek, a thumb across her chin, and then stands up again, opening his chest of drawers and bringing out a small case and handing it to her, smoking the last of his cigarette before leaning over to stub it out on the ashtray next to her.

"It's yours, Sansa," he says as she picks up the small gun inside the case, glinting black. "It'll fit in one of your beaded bags, or in the pocket of a coat."

"Thank you," she says, placing the gun in its case in the drawer of her nightstand.

He turns off the lamp and slides into bed. She feels awkward, her pride sore. She shuffles over to him in the dark and rests her head on his chest as he brings a hand to stroke through her hair, and eventually she's lulled to sleep.

 

A week later she's off on another idle errand while Petyr is once again busy elsewhere in London, and has just left a stationer's shop empty-handed when she stops short at Jon appearing in front of her.

"Why are you still in London?" she hisses, heart tripping in her chest, looking around for Petyr's man, or men, they keep at such distance she can't ever seem to tell how many guards she has.

"All these guards," Jon remarks, following her eyes. "Your husband doesn't trust you one bit, does he, he keeps you locked up in his house like a doll."

Petyr has never told her she can't go anywhere or do anything, like her brothers used to, like Jon used to, and though she thought at first that the guards might be a way of showing her he disapproves, a threat, she's found that she can ask Petyr's driver to take her anywhere and he'll follow her wishes entirely, that the guards never intervene. They'd be well within their rights to bully Jon away from her now, although perhaps Petyr is cautious of public scenes.

She walks further along the street, ducking into the entrance of an alleyway as Jon follows.

"What are you doing here, and why are you planting explosives?" she asks.

Jon shrugs, tips his cap back on his head as he leans on the wall opposite her.

"All you're going to do is get yourself in trouble," she says.

"Is that a threat?"

" _No_ , he knows I'll leave him if he hurts you. But I did what I did to protect you, and the others, don't fuck it up now, don't make what I did worthless."

"What you did," he huffs and moves closer, crowding her against the wall. "This would break Dad's heart, to see you whore yourself out like this."

She swears and pushes him back. "Like you whore your body, your fists, your blades, out for Robb?" she asks. "You'll do anything he says, hurt anyone, kill anyone."

He shakes his head.

"I'd have thought you'd be happy to see your sister make a good marriage," she continues, lifting up her chin.

"A good marriage," he laughs bitterly. "It kills me to think about that creep with his hands all over you," he grits out.

"Instead of your hands," she says bitingly. "You wanted me there by your side, always in reach, but you wouldn't touch me, you wouldn't fuck me."

"You're my sister," he says insistently, mournful smile in place.

"That didn't stop you from kissing me, did it."

"It was wrong."

"I don't care," she spits, "it's not like we're going to have children, we wouldn't hurt anyone."

"They would have known, Dad would have known-"

"You believe in heaven now?"

"– _I_ would have known."

"Do you think of me when you fuck your wife?"

" _Sansa_."

"Go back to Birmingham, Jon. Go back to your wife, and stop hanging round my door."

"Alright," he says, putting his hands in his pockets, "if that's what you want, I'll go back for now. But this won't stand, Sansa, I'll not let it, and I'll be back. And when you've had enough of your mansion and your servants and all your finery, there'll be a place for you at home."

"Fuck you," she says and he jolts forward to kiss her cheek, hard, and then leaves.

She wanders the streets until it's dark, eating her way through a bag of pastries, dragging her feet, and when she gets home she heads straight to the stairs.

"Good evening, little wolf," Petyr greets, as he leaves the dining room.

"I'm tired," she replies flatly. "And I can't sleep in your bed, it's uncomfortable."

"As you wish, feel free to choose another bedroom for yourself," he says, and she turns on her heel and stomps upstairs.

She knows which bedroom to choose, the one at the back of the house above the kitchen wing, the one which she can climb down from into the garden. But she's too tired for escaping that evening and lies awake in the lonely, cold bed for much of the night instead.

A couple of evenings later, with Petyr out late, she makes a break for it, dressing up in a silky peach-coloured dress with a dark wool coat with fur trim over the top, and shimmying down the back of the house and then hurrying along the residential street to Brook Street to get to the Soho clubs. She might as well make the most of living in London, she thinks, passing couples and groups on their way to and from the pubs and theatres and clubs, their faces lit up by the streetlamps as they pass, their laughter and merriment infectious.

She tries one club that's too quiet first, where she feels too conspicuous, but the next one suits her perfectly since there are several groups of friends that she can latch onto and pretend to be part of, so that she doesn't get the kind of attention a woman alone might encourage. She snags a bottle of champagne from a drunken girl who thinks that they went to school together, and works her way through it, pausing to dance to the band, spinning from partner to partner, letting herself be buoyed up by the crowd and become someone other than who she is, a girl with no cares in the world.

Later, she tries to flirt with a few of the more timid men, enjoying the way their eyes glaze over when she touches their arm, when she pretends to laugh at their jokes. But when she's talking to one of them, a man with a Coventry accent who she swore blushed when she pressed herself against him as someone else passed them by, her flippant mood vanishes as she recognises someone approaching them through the crowd.

He doesn't wear the Stark cap but he's familiar all the same: Theon Greyjoy, who fostered with the Starks when he was young before he went over to France in the same company as Robb and Jon, and who'd returned to his family in the Fens last she knew.

"I'd not flirt with this one, if I were you, or Jon'll cut you," Theon says to the man she's been speaking to.

"Jon?" the man replies warily.

"You don't know who this is, do you? It's Sansa Stark, Jon Snow's sister." Theon turns to her as the man makes his nervous excuses and leaves, "Oh, I suppose it's Sansa Baelish now, isn't it. How is your husband?" he asks with a leer.

"What are you doing here, Theon?" she asks, his presence a rude reminder of all the shit she was trying to forget.

"I'm just passing through," he says with a shrug, hands in pockets. "Robb asked me to look into some new opportunities while I was here. He'll be interested to hear a report of your whereabouts though, so will Jon. To be gallivanting about in a club like this, flirting with men who aren't your husband." He tsk's. "Yes, I think Jon will find this very interesting."

"Fuck off, Theon."

"There's that Stark temper," he says and tilts his head with a smile. "You know, you and Jon are more alike than you think."

"Bye, Theon," she says, curtly, turning on her heel as he laughs, retrieving her coat from the coatroom and hurrying up above ground to the cool spring night, the merriment of Soho's revellers grating on her nerves now.

Her feet are sore by the time she's made it home, and her mood isn't must improved. She feels thin, lost, and desperate to get back into bed, cursing herself for coming out tonight as she hoists herself up over the windowsill and back inside.

"Did you have a nice evening?" a voice says from the corner of the room, followed by the spark of a cigarette being inhaled. "I have to say, although I was aware of our age difference when we got married, I didn't realise I would have to take quite so fatherly a role."

"You don't have to," she says, hating the way she sounds petulant, heart still racing at the shock of someone being in her room.

"Shall I take you over my knee, is that what you're after?" Petyr says, standing up and turning on the lamp beside him and then strolling over to stand before her. "No, I don't think that's what you really want, is it," he murmurs silkily, cupping her chin in his hand.

 _I don't know what I want_ , she thinks, and tries not to shiver at his touch.

"If you wanted to go out you could have gone to one of my clubs. The White Hart is small fare, Sansa."

"You followed me?" she asks pointlessly.

He huffs a laugh and then strokes his thumb down her cheek. "You're very precious to me, you know that, darling." He nudges her back to the bed and she slumps down on it. He kneels before her and unbuckles her shoes with careful attention that makes her eyes prickle. "Now, you didn't let any of those boys paw at you, did you?" he asks.

"What if I did?" she says, voice growing thin as he slides his warm palms up her shins and rests them on her knees. She tries not to shift her legs towards him so that his hands will move further up beneath her dress.

"Then I'd have to let them know that I don't appreciate them touching what's mine."

"You're just like him, you know, you think you own me," she murmurs, tongue loosened by the champagne, as he pushes her to lie down.

He leans over her, and even with his head blocking the light of the lamp she can see the shadow of his smile. He strokes the long strand of pearls which has fallen over one of her shoulders, and taps the ring on her finger. "I do own you."

And why does it make her belly tremble when he says that as much as it also makes her want to claw his face off?

He rolls up the hem of her dress and presses his face over her knickers, making her squirm, and then peels them down, leaving the stockings where they are as he encourages her to lift her legs over his shoulders and then puts his wicked mouth to good use between her legs, nipping at her inner thighs, laving his tongue up the slit of her cunt, spreading her with his thumbs and sucking at her clitoris, making her sob and whine. _Good girl_ , he calls her when she comes, and she hates how much she likes it, how much she likes sitting in his lap and rocking against him, while he strokes her hair back from her face and stares at her, rubs a thumb across her lip and tells her how good she is for him, how perfect.

Later, she lies in his arms as he smokes another cigarette, running her fingers along his collarbone, along the planes of his chest.

"You know," he says, "beyond the fact that your brother still seems to feel a disturbing ownership of you, and the irritation that causes me, as your husband, the main reason I should ban Jon Snow from setting foot in London is that he makes you this upset, doesn't he," he says, stroking a hand through her hair.

She doesn't see the point in answering. "Petyr," she murmurs into the dark of the room, having made a decision tonight, "I'm lonely, waiting here for you, staying at home like a housewife. Take me with you, I want to know more about the business."

"Darling," he says, tilting her chin up to face him, "you only had to ask. I'm sorry if you think I've been neglecting you, and of course you're welcome." He kisses her, a soft press of lips. "You'll be an asset, you know, people will underestimate you for the way you look but you'll prove them gloriously wrong, they'll see."

Sansa finds herself looking forward to it, to _doing something_ , even as her gut chimes a warning that this will only tangle her further in her husband's web.

 

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

 

 

Sansa knew her husband was rich but when she asked to learn more about his work, she still had in mind the sorts of places where the Starks liked to do business - grimy pubs, factory yards, docks, ramshackle gypsy camps, damp alleyways that smelt of piss, and the occasional front room of someone's house while children ran to and fro under foot. She'd not expected to be taken on a tour through the finest restaurants, galleries, bars, hotels, clubs and mansions of London; and all while dressed immaculately in an array of outfits he provided, with the glint of diamonds and pearls around her wrists and in her earlobes.

But if she thought these fine settings would mean that the people they met with - politicians, lords and ladies, dukes, heiresses, and tycoons – would be as refined, as pleasing, as their surroundings, it wasn't to be.

"It's a skill to hide barbs inside polite conversation," Petyr tells her as they drive away from tea with a duchess who had insulted him at least five times before the tea was even served. "But not as great a skill as they believe it is."

"How can you sit there and listen to them?" she asks, thinking of the choice swear words her brothers would've flung at that woman, but then they'd not be meeting with the likes of duchesses, would they.

"Are you sore on my behalf, darling?" he asks with a smile, stroking her cheek. "I tailor who I am to fit the situation, the person. With many of these rich fools, it suits me to appear like their amiable friend, thankful for any morsel of their attention, unassuming. Or, in the case of someone like the gentlemen we met a few days ago, that I'm utterly out of my depth with my lovely young wife, that she is aching for some proper masculine company." He huffs a laugh.

"He was a bore," she says, rolling her eyes.

"Yes, but while he was paying such dutiful attention to you, I got him to sign papers that gave a large percentage of his business to me. I couldn't have done it without you," he says and kisses her.

She doesn't mind playing a role for an audience, she's always liked being admired and wooed, and Petyr is always there beside her ready to step in if they go too far. There's something thrilling about seducing these men out of their wealth, about using what she has to help fill her and her husband's pockets.

Petyr also takes her to his offices a few streets away from the mansion, in another grand building, but while she admires the rooms themselves - their teak desks and gleaming bronze fittings, the two or three studious clerks who barely look up from their books when she walks in - she is less fond of Petyr's secretary, a curvy redhead by the name of Ros.

"Do you fuck her?" she asks as they take the car the short distance home, feeling a churn of jealousy in her gut that she hates.

"Who?"

"Your little secretary," she says sullenly. "Is that a perk of her employment?"

He clucks his tongue and takes her face in his hands as her own hands curl angrily in her lap, ready to push him away. "Sansa, darling, there's no other woman, there'll never be. I swear it," he says, looking far more sincere than usual, but he must see that she's not convinced. "How can I prove it to you, hmm? What would you like me to do?" he asks insistently.

"I don't care."

" _Sansa_ ," he croons, and brushes a thumb across her lips. "Have I been neglecting you, is that what this is?" He kisses her gently, softly, on her lips, her cheeks, tipping her head up to kiss her neck. He pulls one of her hands to his lap. "But to be more blunt, sweetling, I don't get hard for any other woman but you."

She squeezes his cock tightly, too tightly, and he groans a mixture of pain and pleasure.

"Oh, is that it," he murmurs, as the car comes to a halt in front of his mansion, "you want to hurt me, little wolf? Shall I bring you a whip and paddle?"

"No," she says, screwing up her face in distaste and he laughs.

Later, after he's proven his dedication to her quite thoroughly by giving her four orgasms, each more wrenching that the last, she murmurs, "Whips and paddles, is that what they do at your brothels?

"Sometimes," he replies, stroking a hand through her hair as she lies on his chest. "My brothels provide many different services, to suit any and all perversions."

"And now that I've seen the world of Petyr Baelish OBE, are you going to show me Littlefinger's haunts?"

"Now where did you hear a name like that," he teases. "And of course, whatever you wish, with the caveat that there are certain settings, certain male company, that I won't introduce you to because I'll not have them sully you with their presence. Oh, and I'll not take you on any factory tours, because once you've seen one, darling, you've seen them all."

"So I can visit one of your brothels then?" 

"Oh, you are a curious girl, aren't you," he murmurs, and kisses along her neck, nudges her onto her back so that he can lick down her stomach.

"Petyr," she says, gripping his hair, "I don't think I can come again."

"We'll see about that," he says, his eyes glinting as he sets his mouth to her cunt and she whines and arches her back.

 

A few weeks later, he takes her to one of his private clubs that doubles as a high-class brothel.

"The key is to have a space where women feel welcome too," he had told her, "where one can bring one's mistress or even one's wife, should they be liberal, because then there are twice the number of patrons and twice the money. It's more titillating for the men too, having ordinary women in the crowd while trained whores ply their business on stage and in the private rooms."

What does one wear to a brothel, she had pondered facetiously that afternoon, looking at her reflection in the full-length mirror beside her wardrobe, before deciding on her shortest silver sequined dress, with the mink coat over the top.

Petyr's eyes had darkened when she emerged from the room, eyes roaming up and down her body. "You're going to cause a riot dressed like that, I'll have to beat them off with a stick."

She had shrugged, knowing that he loved it, having a pretty wife who other men could look at but never touch. She quite likes having a husband who looks dashing in a smart suit too.

The club is hidden down an unassuming alleyway, with a disguised entrance, but inside everything is extravagant opulence – red velvet banquette seating, chandeliers, gold-leaf ceilings, mirrored walls – the girls dancing on the stage and walking through the crowd just as sumptuous as their surroundings, their skin gleaming and glittering, strings of pearls around their necks, underthings of finest lace and silk, and shiny bobbed hair.

Petyr introduces her to the proprietor, Olyvar, and to a few of tonight's guests – the venerable Lord Royce; Anya Waynwood, who has a much younger man by her side attentively pouring her drinks from a large bottle of champagne; and Lyonel Corbray, who has a girl on his lap who winks at Sansa and acts like she's enthralled by the older man. Then Petyr guides her to his curved banquette near the stage and as she sips on a gin cocktail, he asks her opinion on the people she's just met, whether she can already tell their weaknesses, how they might be useful. 

Her brothers might be skilled with their guns and fists, with their blades, but this is a kind of skill that she knows she can be good at, at judging people's characters, at using their weaknesses. It's certainly worked out well for her husband, she thinks as the diamonds on her wrist sparkle each time she lifts her glass to her lips.

She's already feeling quite tight by the time a handsome couple sweep into the room - he, dark and swarthy, wearing a silk suit in the Dornish style; she, just as good-looking as her male companion, her arms bare and decorated by heavy gold bracelets – and the sound seems to hush as people glance over open-mouthed.

"Oberyn," Petyr greets, standing up and shaking the other man's hand. "And Ellaria, how wonderful you look tonight."

"Thank you," Ellaria says with a smirk. "And who is this lovely little thing?" she asks, turning to Sansa with a softer smile.

"My wife, Sansa. Darling, this is Oberyn Martell and Ellaria Sand."

"A pleasure to meet you," Sansa says, feeling herself blush when Oberyn kisses her hand and Ellaria her cheek.

The two of them join Sansa and Petyr at their table. Sansa is fascinated by the way Petyr seems to be flirting equally with both of them, his words thick with innuendo; although Ellaria keeps getting distracted by one of the dancers, a girl from the Summer Isles, declaring that she's utterly gone on her. Petyr nods his head to Olyvar who whispers something in the dancer's ear and then she saunters down off the stage in her tiny silk knickers and takes Ellaria by the hand, leading her over to the velvet curtain that covers the entrance to the private rooms. Oberyn waves Ellaria off happily, telling her to have fun with a coy wink.

"Can I leave you here with Oberyn for a moment?" Petyr murmurs to Sansa later.

"That's fine," she says and he kisses her and then gets up from the table, striding over to the bar to speak to a man wearing a hat that shadows his face.

"If I didn't know that he would kill me for it, I would invite you over to our house for dinner," Oberyn says, his voice a rich purr.

She laughs and flicks her hair over one shoulder, warming under Oberyn's hot gaze.

He takes a cigarette out of his case and offers one to her.

"You know," he says, blowing smoke at an angle. "Littlefinger will get you anything, for a price."

She raises an eyebrow. "I've already paid, I married him."

He laughs at that but then turns serious, leaning forward in his seat. "Then you should ask him for a larger gift than whatever he's given you up til now. You should ask him for the Lannisters."

A chill rushes through her but she tries to mask it. "What did they do to you?" she asks.

He takes a sip of his drink and sucks his teeth, his smile murderous, his eyes mournful. "They killed my sister and her children. They raped her and they murdered her."

Sansa's heart is beating so fast it hurts. "You're rich, surely," she says, "pay up and he'll do what you want, as you say. Why are you trying to get me to ask him for you?"

"He'd lose money, a lot of money, more money than I could pay him. But you-"

"Are you trying to get me to whore myself out for you?"

"I was only making a suggestion. You want them gone, just as I do, don't you?"

She turns away to glance at Petyr who is looking straight at her, frowning at the two of them. He leaves the bar and makes his way to her, as Oberyn stands up and says he's going to join Ellaria.

"What was he talking to you about," Petyr asks insistently, turning her around in her seat to face him, "he upset you."

"I can handle myself," she says, feeling her hands tremble in his grasp, pleased that the height of the banquette hides her from everyone but the girls on stage. She feels agitated now, her good mood vanished.

"I don't like to see you upset."

"He was talking hot air about the Lannisters," she says, downing her glass.

"Was he."

What she'd like right now, she decides, is a good distraction from the horrors of the past. "Petyr," she says, pressing herself against him until she sees his eyes heat, "do you have any snow?"

"Sansa," he says, clucking his tongue. But he does bring out a little vial and cuts two lines for her on the table like he's done it a thousand times before, though she imagines he values control too much to ever take many illicit substances himself.

Afterwards, she's buzzing and warm and everything is bright and wonderful, the girl dancing on stage a few steps away from them is mesmerising and the music the band is playing makes her want to get up and dance herself.

She slides into Petyr's lap, as he holds an arm tight around her waist.

"What would you do if I got up and danced like that on stage?" she hums in his ear.

He sucks at her neck, tugging her closer to him. "I'd watch you and I'd rub one out," he murmurs, "and then I'd kill every man here, cut their throats so that the floor was inch thick in blood," he says and kisses her deeply, tongue sliding over her teeth in a way that makes her squirm.

He won't let her have more than a few lines so she switches back to gin, feeling herself grow heavy and languid, sadder, slumped against Petyr with an arm around his neck.

When they leave, the air outside makes her shiver and tug her coat around herself tightly with fumbling hands. Her footsteps are unsteady on the cobblestones.

"Could you do it, Petyr, could you bring them down, Cersei and her father too," she murmurs as he leads her to his car, almost holding her up. "Could you kill Joffrey, would you, for what he did to me?" she asks, stopping to look at him in the glow of the street lamps, hating the way the gin makes her sound plaintive and young.

"What did he do?"

She's silent, watching his face go absolutely still.

"That was him, he did that to you?"

She doesn't remember anything after that until the next morning, waking just after Petyr has left their bed. She's got a headache and she feels sad and aching, her belly sore too. She pulls the ringpull and has a maid bring her tea and fill a bath.

The water is almost hot enough to burn and she groans at how rough she feels, resting the back of her neck against the cold enamel of the bath, trying to doze but the twinges in her pelvis won't let her. She sits up and puts a hand between her legs, stares at the little flecks of blood that seep out into the water, and it's then that Petyr enters the room, his eyes roaming her, catching on the blood, as she stares back unashamedly, too sore to move.

"Alright?" he asks, coming to kneel by the side of the bath, rolling the sleeves of his shirt up.

She shakes her head mulishly.

He strokes his knuckles down her cheek, dips his hand in the water to palm her sore tits. "I've heard orgasms can help with all manner of pain."

She raises an eyebrow, looks down at the water between her legs.

He breathes a laugh. "I'm not squeamish, darling, I'd put my mouth there if you wanted."

"No thank you," she says, voice getting thin as his hand glides down her stomach, as he dips his fingers gently into her cunt.

He watches her face intently as he touches her, as he works her up, and she bites her lip to muffle the whines, closing her eyes at the last moment because it feels too intimate.

He helps her out of the bath, dries her, and dresses her in a silk nightgown, leading her back to bed, and folding a soft towel underneath her which she'd be embarrassed about if she wasn't so tired and raw. He tucks her in and she thinks about mocking him but she likes it too much, being cared for by him.

"There," he says, and kisses her on the forehead. "You get some rest."

He's at the doorway when he turns back and says, "Oh, and Sansa, what you asked me for last night, I've started work on it."

It's only when he's shut the door quietly behind him that she remembers what she said, what she'd asked him to do, and her eyes flick open.

It's not a secret that Robb's true aim, Catelyn's too when she was still alive, was to get the Starks powerful enough to get their revenge on the Lannisters, but it was a pipe dream, an impossibility when the Lannisters had the very organs of the state in their pockets, when Cersei was a peer and Tywin one of the most powerful members of the House of Lords.

A single request from her and Petyr has set the wheels in motion.

She shifts on the bed and presses her face into the pillow, heart sluggish, teeth chattering as the warmth from the bath leeches from her.

 

*

 

"Now, you want Joffrey to know it was you, correct?" Petyr asks her one morning over breakfast a few months later, startling her into spilling coffee onto the tablecloth.

"Yes," she says with a swallow. "But won't there be retaliations from the Lannisters?"

"You let me handle that," he says with a smile, folding up his newspaper and getting up from the table, kissing her on her head as he passes.

She finds it hard to sleep the next few nights, waking with a panic from half-remembered dreams of her last encounter with him, lying awake, staring at the darkened ceiling until she wakes Petyr too with her shifting about and he pulls her into his side and murmurs that everything's going to be alright.

 

"Margaery will be with Joffrey tonight," he says as the maids finish dressing her and pinning her hair. Today is the day, he had announced at lunch and Sansa's heart has been racing ever since.

"Margaery, but-" she begins, thinking back over her friendship with the other girl, wondering whether or not she's been spying on Sansa for Petyr all this time. But then Sansa was the one who surprised him with an offer of marriage so probably not – not that he won't have other spies in Birmingham, and amongst the Starks. "I didn't know she knew you."

"I have lots of friends," he says with a shrug.

"And what kind of event is it, you've been very coy."

"Have I? It's a wedding."

Her lipstick drops from her hand. "A wedding, to Margaery? The Tyrells are involved?"

"They are, hoping to muscle in on some of the Lannister's business, on their gold to be more precise. And it's a wedding banquet we'll be attending, not the wedding itself, thankfully."

A wedding, she thinks, trying to picture what will happen. She powders her face carefully, leans close to the mirror to fix her lipstick, glancing up at her wide eyes. A man could drown in those eyes, Petyr tells her sometimes.

"And they're just going to let us walk in there," she says disbelievingly, as they pull up outside Claridge's later.

"They invited us, darling," he says nonchalantly. "I assume so that Joffrey and Cersei can get a few digs in about your father, or that they think you're pining over him. Stupid cunts," he says mildly.

He turns to her and cups a hand behind her neck. "I won't leave you for a minute, not even to piss, I'll use one of their fancy plant pots and scandalise the other guests. Are you ready?"

She smiles and her lips only tremble a little. "Ready," she nods.

"Good, you look devastatingly pretty today, darling, Margaery is going to be seething," he remarks as he helps her down from the car.

She squares her shoulders and takes his arm, and they sweep into Claridge's along with a crowd of the great and the not so good in their sparkling finery.

Their seats are at the back of the room, on a rise so that they can see the head table quite clearly, and alongside a series of dull guests who seem more interested in the sumptuous surroundings - the chandeliers glinting brightly, the thick oriental carpet, the polished mahogany walls, the silver service on the table, the waiters standing so straight they look like sculptures - rather than making smalltalk with the Baelishes.

When the Lannisters enter, she grips Petyr's hand tightly beneath the table, and blows out a breath. Tywin, imperious as ever, cigarette smoke furling from his mouth. Cersei, cinched into a shimmering dress, the ends of her bob so sharp it looks like it's just been cut. Tyrion saying something droll to the dark, pretty girl beside him who Tywin is glaring at. Jaime is on the continent, he's had a falling out with Cersei, Petyr had said, otherwise Sansa would've expected him to be glued to his sister's side like always.

The happy couple is the last to arrive, after the Tyrells have taken their seats on the other end of the table. Margaery, looking rosy-cheeked and innocent in her frothy white dress; and Joffrey, cruel wormy smile in place, leaning over to jeer something at his uncle.

Sansa can't eat one bite of the many courses the waiters bring them, but she's drunk at least two glasses of champagne by the time Cersei comes gliding over to their table.

"Little dove," Cersei says, with a smirk, "and your new husband. My, my, you've done well for yourself, Baelish." She looks at Sansa as if to say, but _you_ haven't. 

"As has your son," Petyr replies politely.

Cersei smiles. "It's good to see you, Sansa," she says, patting her shoulder, "I think the last time I did, your father must have still been alive. Such a shame what he decided to do, but then actions do have consequences," she says with a laugh and saunters away.

" _Bitch_ ," Sansa mutters under her breath, "that fucking bitch."

"Just think of her face when it happens, when she loses her son, like you lost your father," Petyr whispers in her ear, arm tight around her shoulders.

But just when Sansa has got herself composed again, the groom himself arrives, Margaery trailing behind him, looking nervous despite her pleasant smile.

"You've got fat, Sansa," he sneers in greeting.

"You look lovely, Margaery," Sansa says and is pleased that her voice barely shakes.

"When I heard you'd married Littlefinger I thought it was a joke," Joffrey continues. "What's it like having his wrinkly dick thrusting into you. Are you less frigid now?"

Sansa feels her body freeze, her heart kick frantically in her chest, but she keeps her face composed, Petyr's hand tight on her leg.

"Your grandfather wants us back at the table for the toasts," Margaery interrupts breezily.

Joffrey says something else to Sansa before he leaves but she can't hear it, she can't hear anything.

"Breathe, Sansa," Petyr murmurs in her ear, squeezing her hand.

She lets out a gasp and then he kisses her to hide her distress from the rest of the room. She closes her eyes and tries to pretend that they're back in the mansion, in their bedroom, that she's safe and warm.

Tywin calls the room to order and makes a short speech about two great families uniting, and then it's Cersei's turn, and Sansa sees Joffrey's eyes roll as his mother speaks. She also sees as he takes something out of his pocket and snorts it quite obviously.

"Is it the drugs?" Sansa murmurs to Petyr, her heart still racing, but now there's a note of anticipation too amongst the fear.

"Watch and see," Petyr says.

Joffrey stands up to make his own speech, spilling champagne out of his glass, his face red and sweating. He barely manages one sneering word before he begins choking.

Petyr pulls Sansa up to stand and the movement at the back of the room draws Joffrey's bloodshot eyes. She nods at him, smiling as he realises that something has gone wrong, that he isn't just choking, that he's dying, and then Cersei screams, and the room erupts into pandemonium, and Joffrey collapses over the table, and Petyr drags Sansa out of the room, hurrying them outside.

"Oh my god," she says underneath her breath, "oh my god."

He bundles her into the car as she sits there, chest heaving, mind whirling.

They reach the mansion within minutes and he guides her from the car carefully.

Suddenly, everything hits her, and she feels like she's heating up, like she's going to shake right out of her body. She grabs him by the lapels of his jacket and kisses him, clutching at him, her nails digging in as her hands roam wildly. "I need you," she gasps, even though they're on the street and it's barely dark, "please," she begs, pushing her body against his, letting out a frantic whine.

" _Fuck_ ," he swears, surprised by the sudden force of her desire, trying to get a hold of her.

They stagger inside and he slams her against the wall of the hall as she kisses him, bites at his lips, her thighs lifting around his hips like she's trying to climb him and he hoists her up and presses her into the wall, grinding against her almost painfully as she tries to tug him even closer.

"I can't carry you," he pants, and she slides down his body and then he's pulling her by the arm into his bedroom and he's pushing her up against the wall again but this time she turns to face it, tugging Petyr behind her so that he's pressing her into the wall, dragging his hand in between her legs as she cries out and he sucks at her neck, pressing his cock against her arse as she widens her thighs.

She arches her back and pushes him away with a shove and he steps back, looking at her wildly, never so out of control he won't listen to her cues.

"Over the bed," she gasps, stripping her dress so violently she scratches the skin of her side, and tugging off her knickers, falling forward over the bed in her stockings, lifting one knee up onto the mattress to open herself up, as his hands slide up her hips and then grip tightly.

"Sansa," he groans, and then she hears the rip of buttons from his trousers before he thrusts inside as she clings to the eiderdown, muffling her cries in it.

He bucks his hips as she moans, but it feels like her body is fighting against her climax, like it's not enough.

" _Petyr_ ," she begs and he swears and reaches a hand round to rub at her, bending his whole body over hers, mouth hot on her back, thrusting in sharp, bruising jabs.

And then she almost screams, rising up on her toes, as something inside of her _gives_ , and she comes with a gush, wailing, while Petyr digs his fingers into her mound, grunting, " _fuck, fuck, fuck_ ," and then he comes with a loud groan while she whimpers and squirms underneath him, feeling the aftershocks ripple through her.

He smooths a hand down her back, pulls out, and falls to the side of her on the bed, tugging her back towards his chest. Her breath is still short, she's still making high-pitched noises but now they've turned into keens and tears are smearing down her face.

"It's alright, Sansa, it's alright, darling," he says, gentling her, holding her, stroking a hand down the back of her head while she cries.

She turns onto her back and hauls him up over her, feeling the weight of his body on hers like he's pressing her back into shape. He strokes a knuckle down her cheek, wipes her tears with his other hand and kisses her softly, gently, as her body finally relaxes.

"Sorry," she murmurs, her cheeks hot with shame.

"What for? For coming so hard you gushed?"

" _Petyr_ ," she says, covering her face with her arm.

"You're shivering, let's get the covers over you," he says, shifting her up the bed.

"You were glorious, Sansa," he says, "and I don't care that you cried, I want you to be open with me, to know what you're feeling."

The next morning, he wakes her up with coffee and some news.

"I hear Lady Lannister was arrested in the early hours of the morning. Such a terrible thing when a woman is put behind bars, and a woman of her standing too," he clucks his tongue, his smile wicked.

"What's she done?" Sansa murmurs, stretching her arms and yawning, feeling a low hum of pleasure.

"Why, she's murdered her firstborn son," he drawls, settling on the bed next to her, already dressed in one of his fine pinstriped suits.

She turns to face him, still sleepy. "And Tywin?"

"Tywin is about to find himself at the centre of the scandal of the century. It has everything - murder, brothels, foreigners, royalty, sodomy - it's quite the masterpiece, if I may say so."

She laughs and draws close to him as he kisses her on the top of her head.

"I think this is my favourite gift you've given me," she says.

He tips her head up. "Better than the pony?" he teases.

She nods impishly and he taps her nose with his finger and then she kisses him, pushing him back on the bed, pleased by the contrast between her bare skin and his suit as he sweeps his hands up and down her back before grabbing at the meat of her arse and grinding her against him.

 

A few weeks after the wedding, as she's sitting out in the mansion's immaculate gardens, wearing a fabulous new pair of sunglasses and sunning her bare legs in the last of the autumn sun, Petyr comes out and joins her.

He's just got back from a trip to his office, his office for Littlefinger business, which is hidden behind one of his brothels, and he hasn't taken his coat off yet.

"Everything alright?" she asks, taking her sunglasses off and blinking at the light.

He fingers his moustache. "Your brother is making some very unwise plans."

"Which brother?"

"Robb. He's going to renege on his deal with the Freys, and hire the Westerlings instead."

"What?" she asks, sitting upright. With the little she knows about her family's business, she does know that the alliance with the Frey's, who hold almost the entirety of the Black Country and thus the canal routes down to London, was hard fought by her mother, and fraught.

"I can do many things, Sansa," Petyr says, coming to sit opposite her, smoothing the crease of his trousers. "I can bribe and threaten and make life hard for people, I can get rid of people, but I can't do anything about the Freys pride being hurt. Honour is a messy business and they'll want him to pay for this. The Freys number almost in their hundreds, spread out across the Black Country. I'd have to massacre a whole village to stop them and even then-" he opens his hands.

"He's so stupid," she swears.

"Talk to him. Telephone him, he might listen to you."

She hurries inside to the cool of the house and stops in front of the telephone stand. She's been doing so well at not thinking about her family, about Robb, and Bran, and Arya. About Jon. About what she left behind.

She steels herself and picks up the receiver, reciting her address automatically to the operator.

It rings for a long while and she waits, perched on the edge of the table, her nails tapping against the polished wood.

"Bran?" she asks when she hears the click.

"Sansa, is that you?"

"It is."

"Everything alright?" he asks, and his voice sounds so familiar it makes her ache.

"It's fine. Bran, I need to talk to Robb, urgently."

A pause. "He's busy right now, Sans."

"It's urgent," she stresses, feeling a pang of hurt.

"I'll try and get him," Bran says and then there's another wait while the line crackles and someone shouts racing odds in the background.

"Sansa?" Robb says when he finally comes to the line. "Bran said you wanted to speak to me."

"I did. Robb, you can't do this to the Freys. You know they'll retaliate, you know how much honour means to them."

"Sansa," he says and clears his throat. She can almost hear him frowning. "I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know what your husband has told you-" he says, almost spitefully.

"Robb, _please_ ," she begs. "Please don't do this. Promise you won't, please."

"Sansa," he sighs. "Alright," he says, "I won't. There now. Is that all you wanted?" he asks brusquely.

"Yes," she says with a small voice, "thank you, Robb."

The line clicks and she stares at the telephone for a moment, feeling hurt tears prickle at her eyes.

"Everything alright?" Petyr asks from along the hall.

"It's fine," she says, swiping at her eyes. "Did you say we were going out for dinner tonight?" she asks, hiding her face in his shoulder for just a moment when he hugs her, before pulling away, smile back in place.

"Darling–" he says, brushing a thumb under her eye.

"It's nothing." She shakes her head. "Dinner?"

He hums and nods, curving a hand round her waist. "The theatre, and then dinner. But I have a present for you to open first."

"Is it sparkly?" she asks knowingly.

"It might be," he teases, leading her upstairs.

When they reach the bedroom, he pushes her down onto the bed.

"But where is the present?" she asks jokingly, the ache from the telephone call receding under his careful attentions.

"So impatient. You're only with me for the jewels, aren't you," he says, kneeling before her, sliding his hands up her legs as she lies back.

"I am," she says, and he laughs and presses his face to her knickers, breathing in noisily, and making her squirm.

"Not the orgasms?" he checks, pulling back.

"Those too," she moans, as he licks her through the fabric and then tugs her knickers out of the way to set his wicked mouth to her cunt.

 

Two days later, as the October sunlight streams into the drawing-room where she lies on the couch, sucking idly on lemon sherbets, her hair dangling down to the floor, Petyr enters the room and stops.

She glances up and by the look on his face she knows.

"Sansa–" he says, softly.

"No," she grits out.

He moves closer and she stands up, putting the couch between them.

He halts. She sees him swallow. "Robb Stark, and his wife Jeyne, were killed yesterday evening while drinking in The Garrison. The Freys have claimed responsibility."

She digs her nails tightly into her fists, her breath draws in on a wheeze.

"Sansa-" he says, holding out a hand.

"No," she states, shaking her head. "No," she spits, barrelling out of the room as he follows at a distance. She runs up to her bedroom, her breath tight but her fury banking down the tears that wait to fall, holding back the wail trapped in her throat.

She pulls down her old suitcase, the only thing she brought with her to her new life, and shoves clothes into it, the photograph of her parents, her purse, and a handful of jewellery, before snapping it shut and turning to leave.

"Sweetling–" he says from the doorway, his face contrite which only makes her angrier. How _dare_ he.

"Get out of my way," she says blankly. "The terms of our agreement have been broken. I'm leaving now. If you come after me, Petyr, I'll shoot you myself."

He steps to the side and she stalks out of the room and along the corridor, racing down the stairs so fast she almost trips, and then hurrying out the door of his mansion, running for a taxi without once looking back.

 

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

 

 

Sansa gets a taxi from Moor Street station but they won't go farther than the edge of Small Heath so she walks the rest of the way on familiar streets unchanged from when she left, the air thick with the smell of hot metal, coaldust and dirt; her path crossed by children with ragged clothes and grubby smiles; women pinning up their washing, stopping to peer suspiciously at her in her smart coat and fashionable hat. She sees the first Stark cap within moments but doesn't recognise the face under it and nor do they seem to recognise her - has she been forgotten so easily? Two men sharing a cigarette give her dirty looks as she passes but she squares her shoulders and walks on.

On the train she'd decided, in the fog of sudden grief, that it was a trick, a false story, that Robb hadn't died at all, that he'd be waiting for her, along with the rest of her family, and now a young part of her starts to think that her mother and father will be waiting for her too, that the clock will have been put back and all the tragedies washed away.

There's guards with guns at the end of their street but she doesn't look at them, instead she watches her feet, carefully avoiding puddles from this morning's heavy rain.

When she reaches the door, she pauses, feeling oddly numb, and raps on the wood with her knuckles.

"Who is it?" a muffled voice replies.

"It's Sansa," she says.

A pause and then voices, the shuffle of feet, the clink and click of bolts being opened, and when the door swings open there Jon is, cap on head, solemn-faced and familiar, and she falls into his arms, crying, clutching at him, hiding her face in his jacket.

He rubs her back, hugs her to him for a while until her crying slows and then she pulls back and he smiles sadly at her, brushing away her tears with his fingers.

Her eyes are drawn to movement over his shoulder, to a woman, a Wildling woman with red hair, holding a sleeping babe in her arms.

Sansa's heart plunges, her body freezes.

Jon coughs and steps to the side.

"Sansa, Ygritte," he says, introducing them, rubbing his hand on the back of his neck. "And this is Ned, Robb's son," he says, face creasing with pain.

Sansa stares at the baby, his black hair, his sleeping pout, and then footsteps thud down the stairs.

"Oh, you're here," Arya says with a sneer as she enters the front room. "Gracing us with your presence, m'lady." She bows mockingly. "Come to see how the other half live, come to judge us?"

"Arya-" Sansa says, knowing her sister well enough to know that her spite hides deep hurt.

"You missed his funeral, it was this morning," Arya says with a tilt of her head.

"Arya-" she says again, and her sister's chin crumples and Sansa goes to her and hugs her.

Arya sniffles into Sansa's shoulder, squeezes her tightly and then steps back, coughing to hide her tears, tipping her cap up on her forehead, the same way their father always did when he was embarrassed.

"I'll be back for the wake," Arya says to them with a nod and leaves by the front door. 

Ygritte goes over to the door afterward and bolts it with one hand, the other arm cradling Robb's son. Robb's _son_.

"You want to hold him?" Ygritte asks. Her voice is smoky and when she speaks she juts her chin out. She's not pretty, she hasn't covered her freckles with powder or seemingly brushed her hair, which is a lighter shade than Sansa's, but there's something there, a wild charm. Sansa hates her, but she hated her when she was only a name too.

"No, thank you," she replies curtly. She knows that if she held little Ned, she'd weep and weep and never stop.

Ygritte shares a look with Jon behind her and Sansa clenches her teeth.

"Let me carry your case up," Jon says, and Sansa follows him up the stairs, pleased to get him alone.

"So she does have red hair," she says, the moment they've entered her old bedroom, unchanged from when she left.

Jon sighs wearily and shuts the door behind them.

"You didn't want to give her my clothes, make us look more alike?" she adds.

"Sansa," he says mournfully.

"Is she a good fuck?" she finds herself saying. She's never been good at taking the high road with Jon, something about him, about his stubborn stillness, riles her up.

"Is he?" he asks, mirthless smile in place. He clenches a fist and the knuckles of his hand, raw and bloodied, crack.

"Who've you've been fighting?" she asks, nodding towards his hands.

"No one."

"Everyone," she corrects.

She slumps down on the thin mattress, hears the sound of faint voices from downstairs and for a moment thinks it's Robb. "I can't believe he's gone," she says, voice thick.

"Neither can I," he says, sitting next to her, letting her rest her head on his shoulder.

She thought she'd be weeping and wailing when she got back, that the grief would be overwhelming, but now that she's here she just feels hollow, her aching sadness like a bruise, not an open wound. She feels sadder somehow when she looks around the room, when she sees the ribbons on the top of her dresser, the faded wallpaper, the newspaper clippings stuck to the wardrobe with its peeling veneer. This is a girl's room, but Sansa isn't a girl any more.

"We should get away from here, Jon," she says softly. "You should leave before they come for you too. Go over to the continent like some of the Tullys did, start new where no one knows us." She grabs one of his rough hands and squeezes it but he doesn't squeeze back. "Let's leave Small Heath, Jon, Birmingham, England. You don't have to do this, you don't have to shoulder all this."

"And who else will?" he says. "Arya? Bran?"

"None of them, they should come too. Bran should go to Cambridge or Oxford or something, to university-"

"Cambridge," he scoffs, standing up, his mouth set in that half-mocking smile she hates. "You're thinking in fairytales," he says. "But fine, we leave here, with Bran and Arya and Rickon, and then what, what happens to the people left behind, the Stark men and their families, the Wildlings, to the people of Small Heath?"

"They get on with it," she says sullenly.

He shakes his head. "I'm not running away with you, Sansa," he says. "I'll not have Robb die for nothing. This is my life, this is who we are, we protect our home, this is what we do." _And if you don't like it, then there's the door,_ rings unspoken in the air.

"I'm glad you're back, Sis," he says with a nod at the door, and then leaves, his steps heavy on the stairs as he rejoins his wife.

"What, no welcome-home kiss?" Sansa says to the empty doorway, and then shuts the door and slumps on her bed, hiding her frustrated tears, her grieving tears, in her pillow.

 

Later, the five of them head to Robb's house at the end of the street for the wake. _It'll just be blood at the start_ , Jon had said, _just family_ , and Sansa had wanted to stick her tongue out at Ygritte but then she'd have to look at her and she's trying hard not to look at the other woman, not to think about her and Jon together, not to make her grief worse.

They take a seat around the table in the parlour, Jon nodding to the chair by his side - but where else was Sansa going to sit?

Arya sets two bottles of whiskey on the table and pours five glasses, saying a toast and throwing hers back.

"Right, I'll start," Bran says, wiping whiskey from his mouth. "When I was sick, when it was bad, Robb sat by my bed and wouldn't move an inch until the fever had passed," he says, smiling sadly as the others nod, remembering. "And on my first birthday after he'd got back from France, he helped me sneak into the museum before the doors opened and he stood there and listened to me bang on about the Romans without letting on that he'd broken his foot the night before."

"I found a grenade by the docks when I was little," Rickon says, pouring another round of drinks. "And he ran after me to grab it off me before I could pull the pin, falling into the Cut for his troubles and walking home smelling like shit."

Arya laughs, and downs her next glass. "He used to pretend to be my pony, give me rides up and down the street when I was far too old for it."

"He stole a dress for me, from Rackham's, for my birthday," Sansa says, remembering the delicate lace of that blue dress she'd treasured for years, "and found enough lemons so mum could bake me a lemon cake."

"I was his brother," Jon says solemnly, pulling the toothpick out from between his teeth, "he never mentioned my mother in any of the fights we had, even though we fought dirty." He smiles and shakes his head.

"You almost killed each other a few times, as I recall," Bran says.

"We got close," Jon drawls and then the mood dips, as they remember that someone else had finished the job.

"Do you remember when he learnt how to say a few phrases in Chinese, from the washerwomen," Sansa says, "so he could flirt with Jeyne, without realising that her mother spoke a completely different language, and how Jeyne thought he was just a lunatic."

They laugh. Some people had been put out by Robb marrying Jeyne, who took after her mother and not her dour Westerling father, but Robb wouldn't brook any insult and he let it be known that he'd cut a man for saying anything against her.

"Jeyne gave me silk thread to sew with for my birthday," Sansa continues, "and that knife with the bone handle for yours, do you remember, Arya?"

Arya nods.

"And now she'll not see her son grow up," Sansa says, a lump in her throat.

Jon puts his arm around her shoulder and kisses her on the head. "We'll look after him, Ned, for Robb and for Jeyne," he says.

"Aye," Rickon says fiercely, raising his glass as the others follow. "I'll teach him how to fight," he says, and Sansa can't help but find that sad; thinking that there's so many other things he should be taught first.

Jon laughs and leans over to ruffle Rickon's hair, to rub his knuckles on his head until the younger boy swears and pushes him away. "You think you're the best fighter in this family?" Jon goads laughingly.

"I'm better than you," Rickon spits out.

When Jon settles back in his seat, he doesn't return his arm to her shoulder, and she misses it.

"I'll teach him to ride," Arya says, "put him on a horse before he can walk."

"I suppose I better teach him his numbers then, so you lot don't raise a feral child," Bran says dryly.

They reminisce about Robb, and about their parents too, for the next hour, steadily getting drunk, and then the doors are opened for the rest of the family, for the Stark men and their families, to pay their respects.

Sansa retreats to the backyard, sitting on a tall pile of blackened bricks, shivering slightly at the cold, and working her way through a pack of cigarettes she'd pilfered from Jon.

"Wishing you were back in your mansion?" Arya says when she finds her. "You know, Theon says that you've been at all the parties, all the clubs and the fancy shindigs."

Sansa sighs wearily.

Arya sits down next to her.

"You were wrong to run away, to go off and marry a stranger," her sister says. "We stick together, Sansa."

"I had my reasons, important reasons."

"Yeah, Jon said. Some nonsense about the Boltons."

"And Inspector Baratheon," Sansa states. And the Wildings, though perhaps they'd have been happy with a marriage, she thinks sourly now, perhaps they didn't need the money Petyr gave. She'll never forgive Jon for marrying Ygritte, for marrying anyone but herself.

"We were all dealing with so much stuff, and you ran away," Arya says and there's a note in her voice that makes Sansa turn to look at her.

Arya's eyes are bleary with whiskey and she looks young all of a sudden.

"What stuff."

"You're supposed to be my sister, we're sisters, but you sauntered off and left me with the boys," Arya continues petulantly.

"I thought you preferred the boys, and hated me."

"I do, I don't. I hate your obsession with dresses. But there are some things..." she trails off.

"What things," Sansa presses.

Arya pauses, foot scratching in the dirt of the yard. "I got into trouble, didn't I," she says, "and had to pay to fix it."

"You got into trouble." Sansa's eyes flick to Arya's stomach. "Oh, Arya," she says and puts a hand on her sister's shoulder, and for once Arya doesn't throw it off.

"It was fine, it was early and she was good, the woman I saw," Arya wipes her face. "But I couldn't mention it to anyone, could I, they'd murder him, and I quite like him alive."

"You didn't want to marry him?"

"Not all the members of this family are so eager to fling themselves into matrimony," Arya says pointedly and then shrugs. "It's not time yet, I'm not ready for that, or to be a mother, not yet."

They share a rueful smile. Playing with dolls was one of the few things they had in common when they were children, emulating their mother who seemed to always have a babe on her hip, whether it was one of hers or a neighbour's she was looking after.

"Is he good to you?" Sansa asks. "Apart from being the kind of twat who forgot to use a condom."

"He is," Arya nods.

"Do you need a diaphragm, because I know a doctor–"

"It's fine, it's sorted," she says with a wave of her hand, standing up and brushing the dirt from her legs.

"What's his name?"

Arya scoffs. "You know I'm not telling you that, you'll spill it to Jon."

"I won't," she says indignantly.

Arya raises an eyebrow. "You will when you're drunk."

 

Sansa is one of the last to leave Robb's house, Jon helping her down the street, his clothes smelling of whiskey and smoke, his footsteps almost as unsteady as hers.

It's just like the last year never happened, she thinks, staring at the starless sky. Was her life in London just a dream - all those parties, the opulence, _Petyr._ Maybe she just dreamt it, maybe she's still that little girl sitting in her bedroom above the betting shop, dreaming about pretty things, making wishes for the future.

"I'm glad you came home, Sans," Jon murmurs, "you belong here, we're a family, got to stick together."

She struggles with the stairs inside their house and Jon lifts her up and carries her into her bedroom.

"Hey, where are you going?" she says blearily once he's plonked her down on her bed.

"To bed, Sansa," he says.

She pats the bed next to her.

"We're not children any longer," he says.

"I know that," she says grumpily.

He sighs and sits down next to her.

"I miss you," she says.

"I'm right here." He's always the most contrary when he's been drinking.

"Fine, I _have_ missed you."

"I've missed you too," he says, brushing her hair over her shoulder as she turns to him.

His eyes move over her face and get caught on her mouth. She leans forward to kiss him but he turns his head at the last moment so her lips meet his bristled cheek instead.

He cups her face, presses his thumb into her bottom lip.

"Kiss me, Jon," she whispers, wanting him to make the first move, wanting so desperately to be _wanted_ by him.

But he doesn't. He stands up, face inscrutable as ever, and clears his throat. "I'm moving into Robb's house, Ygritte and me."

"How nice for you," she says spitefully.

"Don't be like that," he says, his eyes soft and sad.

"Like what," she replies, lifting her chin.

"Good night, Sansa," he says and leaves her and she doesn't remember anything after than; sliding into a deep, drunken sleep and only waking up at eleven o'clock the next morning.

At Petyr's she had new dresses to wear almost every day, but she's loathe to wear any of the old ones in her moth-ridden wardrobe here, so she buttons up the same dress she wore yesterday, brushing out her hair and pinning it in a loose bob.

They're having a meeting downstairs - Jon, Rickon, Arya, and Bran with the books in front of him, along with a small crowd of Stark men. Mourning is over, now it's time to plan their revenge.

"So, what's the plan?" she asks, dragging out the seat next to Jon. The room falls silent, the men look to Jon and Arya.

"You don't need to be here for this meeting," Jon says kindly.

Sansa raises her eyebrows. "No, I don't _need_ to be, but I want to be, I want to help."

She hears a scoff from somewhere in the room.

"Sansa," Jon says, nodding towards the side room, "let's talk."

"Yes, Jon, let's," she retorts.

He closes the double doors behind them and moves closer, lifts up his hands like he wants to put them on her shoulders or cup her face again, but she moves out of reach.

"I can help, I learned things in London," she says.

Jon rubs at his chin. "There's a conflict of interest, Sansa, and you know it."

"No I don't."

"Your husband," he says, a snarl twitching his top lip.

"What about him? I've left him."

"Oh, you have, have you."

She holds out her arms as if to say, yes, here I am, back in Birmingham. Back being pushed to the side again.

"You can't be involved in this because we can't be sure that what we say won't get back to him, to Littlefinger," he says.

"You think I'd lie to you, you think I'd betray this family?" she says, stalking close to him, stabbing her finger into his breastbone.

He catches her hand but she pushes away from him again. If he says that she _did_ betray her family she's actually going to hit him, and she's never hit him before.

"We can't be sure he wasn't part of it."

"I can, he told me what Robb was planning with the Freys and had me call him to try stop him. Ask Bran," she says, motioning to the other room.

Jon sighs and looks behind him at the door.

"Oh, sorry, am I keeping you?" she says sarcastically, hating that Jon seems to bring out the very worst in her now. "This is a waste of time. I want to help."

"You can't, Sansa," he says firmly.

"That's your final word, as head of this family, is it."

"It is."

"Fuck you, Jon. Fuck you," she spits, then leans closer, "oh, I forgot, you won't fuck me, will you. You won't fuck me, you'll not let me help, what the hell am I even here for?" she asks, but he has no answer.

Neither does she, she thinks sullenly, stalking out of the house and marching along the street, getting as far as the end of it, at least three guards following in her wake, before she realises there's nowhere she wants to go in Birmingham, that she doesn't have anyone else here.

She makes her way to the back of the house and climbs up to her bedroom, her dress ripping and dirtying on the bricks which only makes her feel more disgruntled, and then she strips and gets back into bed, feeling like nothing's changed, like she's trapped here, even though she knows she isn't.

She wakes to the sounds of fighting, a car backfiring, shots and shouts on the street.

She sits up in bed, fumbles for the gun Petyr gave her, wondering if she's going to have to fire it. Does she trust in her family to protect her? Does she trust in Jon when he has Ygritte to look after?

Eventually the noises die down, and when she heads downstairs there's only a couple of Stark men bloodied.

Jon looks furious, he's stripped down to his shirtsleeves with a gun in each holster, a rifle in his hands, and he's arguing with Desmon and Jacks, a large Wildling man with a bushy beard waiting to his side, leaning back against the wall with his arms crossed.

When Jon sees her, he sets the rifle down, and comes over to her.

"You alright?" he says.

"Yes. What happened?"

"The Freys again. In retaliation for this morning."

"What happened this morning?"

"Sansa, you'll be moving to the Wilding camp for the next while, along with Bran and some of the families."

"No, I won't."

"Yes, you will," he tells her firmly. "It's not safe here, I can't protect you and fight the Freys at the same time."

"So don't, let's leave here, leave everything."

"This again," he mutters angrily, "I don't have time for this, pack your bags."

What else can she do, she's pretty sure Jon would carry her out if he had to. She gets into the motorcar driven by one of the Umbers as a protest, mood souring when she sees Ygritte slide into the front seat next to Jon in his motorcar.

The Wildlings are camped on fields near the river, women sitting out on the steps of their wagons with their children playing before them, while the men clean guns and sharpen blades, smoke from the camp's fires drifting up to the sky.

Her mother grew up in a camp like this with the Tullys but as the daughter of the old king, she'd a wagon to herself. Sansa used to ask her to describe it, the patterns painted on the outside, the velvet furnishings inside, how it felt to live in a home that could move from place to place.

A week ago she'd called a mansion her home, Sansa thinks, nudging a chicken out of her way as she heads for the fire in the centre of the camp, she'd dozens of servants at her beck and call.

The men huddle at the edge of the wagons to plan, Jon at the centre where Robb and her father once stood. But what happens when Jon goes and gets himself killed, she thinks wearily, is it Arya who takes charge, Rickon?

And what does Sansa do, sit here and wait for her family to be killed, hide away in her childhood bedroom and pretend nothing's happening outside? What life can she have in Birmingham, what life would her family let her have? She doesn't belong here, maybe she never did.

Little Ned is being rocked to sleep in the arms of a wizened Wildling, her wrinkled face beaming at the babe.

Sansa bends over him, strokes her finger down his soft cheek. _Hullo heartbreaker_ , she murmurs, drinking him in, and then takes a seat on a log by the fire.

Ygritte sits down opposite her, whittling something with a knife.

"Do Wildling women not fight?" Sansa asks, goading her a little.

Ygritte barks a laugh. "Oh, we fight," she says. "We fight more viciously than the men do, especially if it's the children who are threatened."

"But you're not going with them," Sansa says, nodding over to the group of men packing up ammunition, shoving guns into holsters, knives into belts; swaggering around, fitting caps to their heads; Arya among them.

Ygritte shrugs and twirls the knife in her hand. "Plenty of fights to come."

 _Is this the life you planned_ , Sansa thinks of asking her, watching Ygritte bend over her carving, _didn't you ever want to run away_ _too?_ Maybe Ygritte did run away, maybe marrying Jon was her happy escape from the camps and the wagons. If Sansa was a Wildling girl, if that had been her, and Jon had been presented to her on her wedding day, sullen and beautiful, knuckles bruised but hands gentle when he took hers to make his vows, she'd have thought she was the luckiest girl in the world.

She grits her teeth, rubs a finger in her eye to stop the sudden tears that prickle.

Jon strides over, pausing when he sees both of them either side of the fire.

"We'll be back tonight," he says gruffly, with a nod.

"In one piece, please," Ygritte orders, and the corner of his mouth tweaks and it's that, that one little movement, that one hint at their easy familiarity, that guts Sansa to the core, that decides her.

Soon after the men have driven off, crammed into two motorcars and a truck, Sansa stands up and brushes away the wood chips that have snagged on her dress.

"Can you drive, Ygritte?" she calls over her shoulder, walking towards the motorcar they left behind.

"Of course I fucking can," Ygritte says with a smile, "but I don't often get the chance to." She opens the driver's door as Sansa slides into the other seat. "Where to?" Ygritte asks, hands on the wheel.

Sansa tells her and the other woman nods.

She can't tell if Ygritte knows about her and Jon, if she's doing this because she wants Sansa to leave quicker, or if it's just that Sansa's kin now, or that she'd rather not wait around twiddling her thumbs either. Maybe it is just that she likes to drive, maybe Ygritte is that straightforward.

They drive in silence, the winter fields rushing past, the roads quiet. Sansa has no interest in giving her blessing or in making friends with Ygritte. The other woman is perfectly nice, charming in her rough and ready way, but Sansa will always nurse a deep well of jealousy against her, a hatred.

She has Ygritte drop her at the end of the long drive and then walks it slowly, staring up at the large manor house, suitcase bumping against her leg. She lets herself think about everything she didn't in Birmingham, lets herself remember the months she'd shared with Petyr, the new life she made.

When she rings the doorbell, the housekeeper answers as if she expected her, unflappable like all the best servants. Sansa goes up to the room she and Petyr shared on their honeymoon, the bed neatly made, the surfaces dusted and the curtains drawn back to let in the early November light.

She sets her suitcase down and opens the wardrobe, stroking the clothes he chose for her that are waiting here like she's a doll to dress up. But she's not a doll, she's a woman of flesh and blood.

She pulls out a fur-trimmed cardigan and tugs it on over her favourite pink silk dress that she brought with her to Birmingham even though she knew there'd be no occasion to wear it. Then she leaves by the back of the house, walking along the dewy grass, her hands in her pockets, towards the stables.

Lady, for that is what the slightly embarrassed groom tells her he calls the pale horse Petyr gifted her as a wedding present, is a joy to ride, with a smooth gait and an easy temperament.

Sansa rides her around the perimeter of the estate while the cold air pinks her cheeks and her eyes are caught on the fields beyond the boundary line, on the woodland beyond that.

Was this what her mother felt like, riding around the camps of her youth, looking to the horizon, a restless hum in her gut, before she married Ned and was fixed to a home in a city noisy with industry, elbow to elbow with the neighbours, her house no longer on wheels, no longer free? Sansa remembers that Catelyn used to look out at the fields wistfully when they visited the fair, that she tried to grow roses from seeds out the back of the house, her pots always being knocked over by the boys' messy footsteps, spilling black earth onto the coal-blackened gravel.

Family, Duty, Honour. Her mother had been married off to join two families, and Sansa feared that she'd have the same done to her, so she went and made her own match and, in the process, split herself off from her family forever.

But why stop at this, she thinks, bringing Lady to a halt at the low boundary wall, both their breaths sending mist into the air. Why not take the money she has and run from here, run from everyone, dye her hair, change her name, start a new life in America. Why not, she thinks, as Lady tugs at her reins, as Sansa feels her own restless agitation, the Tully blood hot in her veins.

She turns Lady away, making another wide loop of the grounds; glancing to the right, over the open fields; and to the left, towards the grand house with all its luxury, its comforts and pleasures.

She makes another loop, pushing Lady hard, her hips starting to ache because it's been so long since she's ridden.

She can see him now, waiting for her on the terrace, cigarette in hand, eyes fixed on her.

She rides closer, slowing to a walk and then halting her horse just beyond the balustrade. He walks towards her, putting a hand out for the horse to sniff, stroking down its long nose.

When he was with the Tullys he must have spent most of his time on horseback, she forgot that, he seems so urbane now. He must have been tender with them, she thinks, soft like he was with her, a little boy with wild curls and grinning eyes.

"Petyr, I'm pregnant," she says.

"I know," he replies, with a smile coloured by masculine pride.

Her last monthly was three months ago. The first month she missed she chalked up to the upheaval of her life, the second to a lack of iron, making sure to eat every morsel of red meat that she could, even though it made her feel nauseous. But she couldn't ignore the third month, the swelling of her tits, the new curve of her belly that appeared a few days before she got the news about Robb.

She slides off the horse and the groom appears to take the reins from her.

Petyr is staring at her intently, blowing out the last of his cigarette smoke.

"I blame you, I want you to know that," she says mildly.

He scoffs gently. "Preventing that was your concern, darling, you never asked me to _wear_ anything. I can't help it if you forgot, or if I'm just that potent." He shrugs.

"I hate you," she says.

"No, you don't," he says, coming around to her side of the balustrade, lifting a hand to stroke her arm, his touch making her eyes flutter.

"Yes, I do."

"I know you might have thought of this marriage as a brief interlude, something you could wriggle yourself out of. That I was expendable, hmm?" he says, rubbing his thumb on her arm. "But I also know that you've always wanted to be a mother, haven't you, sweetling?" He touches her cheek so softly. "He can't give you a child, you know that," he adds, looking very almost sincere.

"You're mistaken about my feelings for him."

"I'd like to think so." He lights another cigarette, the movement of his soft hands always elegant, his knuckles unbroken even though he's killed just as many men as her brothers have. He's not the safe choice, not the choice of a girl who wants to truly run away from everything.

"I'm very happy we're having a child, Sansa," he says, "and I swear to you that they'll want for nothing, and neither will you - doctors, nurses, maids, a nursery with everything you could ever dream of. Clothes for your changing body." His eyes glance over her.

"You'll not want me after I've had a child, anyway," she retorts, without any real fire. "With my saggy tits and thick waist."

He clucks his tongue. "Sansa, I'll always want you."

And isn't that it, why a part of her chose him – nothing she could do could make him stop loving her, could make him turn away, change his mind about whether he _wants_ her or not, he'll stick by her through everything.

The power of having a powerful man like that at her heel.

Although does she have him at her heel? Sometimes she doesn't know which of them was leashed to which.

She said to Jon that they should leave it all behind, run away, but she's tied herself into this business, there's no way now of having a normal life, of being someone other than her, Sansa Stark, Sansa Baelish.

And she told herself she married Petyr to protect her family, but didn't she do it to protect herself too? Didn't she first think of it when she was cowering in her bedroom listening to the Wildlings break in downstairs, to the explosion; isn't it a remnant of what Joffrey did to her, what none of her brothers could prevent?

All Petyr's gifts, and all the expensive things he's bought her, the things he's done for her - bribes, murders, political manoeuvring - and it's this, this little creature spinning inside of her womb, that's tied her to him irrevocably, the one thing that'll mean she won't ever leave him.

He'll be a good father, she thinks as he guides her towards the house, arm around her waist. Indulgent, gentle, marvelling at everything they do.

And she'll be as fierce as Catelyn was for her own children, she'll be vicious as a wolf to protect this child and the others, the ones she'll likely have so that her child can grow up with brothers and sisters, in a family like hers, the happy family of her childhood before the world intruded and wounded all of them.

She'll leave her family to their fates now, and try and bank down any apprehension, any fear at the news to come. She's done as much as she can, there's nothing more she can give them except for her life and she wants that for herself, she doesn't want to wither away in Small Heath, or die there either.

"I'm thinking of going into politics," Petyr says as they take the stairs up to the bedroom.

Her hands and feet throb pleasantly with the warmth of the house after the cold wind outside, the fires of the house generously lit, radiators clinking as they heat up every floor.

"I thought you were already in politics."

He chucks her under the chin. "What a clever little wolf."

She rolls her eyes but can't stop from smiling too. She's missed him, missed his care and the pleasure he brings her, missed how comfortable she feels when she's with him. What does it mean about her feelings for Petyr that he doesn't rile her up like Jon does, that she doesn't feel crazed and restless and sore all the time in his presence, that her petulance doesn't tip over into spite and hatefulness.

She lets herself be nudged onto the bed. "I'm not in the mood for sex right now," she says.

"Such a dirty mind my wife has," he says, pulling off his jacket and propping himself beside her in his shirt sleeves, stroking her hair behind her ear, running his thumb down her cheek. "Your face has filled out; do you know that?" he says softly.

"If you're calling me fat–"

"And these have filled out too," he says, brushing a hand across her tits.

She takes his hand and puts it on her belly, watching the way his face goes still.

"You'll not be able to feel them yet," she says.

"I know that," he scoffs. "I grew up in a gypsy camp surrounded by pregnant women and squalling babes. But have you?"

She nods. "Last night I felt a flutter."

He smiles and then his forehead creases. "And are you eating enough, getting enough rest. Have you seen a doctor?"

"No, not yet."

"I'll have one called out tonight. What would you like cook to make for your dinner?"

This is only a small taste of how attentive he's going to be during this pregnancy, she thinks, he's going to fuss around her like a mother hen. He who thinks himself suave and smooth, he who is utterly ruthless in his business dealings. He's going to cry when the baby is born, she can see it now, and she smirks to herself.

"What are you laughing at?"

"You." She shifts on the bed. "You're going into politics, you said."

"Well, yes," he says, "while no official position can give me any more power than I already have, one has to start thinking of one's legacy," he looks at her belly meaningfully. "A seat in the House of Commons sounds like a nice starting point, don't you think?"

"And you'll trot out your beautiful young wife and bonny babe for the photographs."

"You're saying you don't like being photographed, that you wouldn't like appearing in the society pages, being invited to all the best parties?" he says knowingly, between gentle kisses that tickle her mouth.

She pushes him over onto his back and straddles his hips.

"Oh, the riding isn't over for today, is it?" he says archly, clutching her hips tightly, digging his thumbs into the sore muscles so she groans and bites her lip. "And I thought you weren't in the mood?"

She shuts him up with her mouth and he welcomes it gladly, tilting her head with his hand, laving his tongue over hers.

He undresses her carefully, peeling her stockings off and kissing up her legs, nuzzling at her cunt like he's starved for it, licking into every fold, sucking at her clitoris until she comes.

When she's recovered, he has her sit in his lap, watches her hotly as she sinks down on his cock.

"We'll not be able to do this soon," she groans as she starts to move, "I'll get too big."

"I'll just use my mouth on you then, such a hardship for both us," he drawls which makes her snort a laugh that turns into a whine when he presses his thumb against her clitoris and thrusts up.

She slings an arm around his neck, and he kisses her, guiding her movements with his hand on her hip.

"There you are, good girl," he says as she comes with a flutter around him, thighs twitching and breath short.

There's worse husbands she could've chosen, she thinks wryly as she lies in bed later, her stomach full from the rump steak and lemon cake at dinner, her body pleasantly sore, a warm arm slung over her side; there's far worse futures she could've had.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who's been reading and commenting and keeping me company while I worked on this! <3 <3

**Author's Note:**

> I'm pretty sure that the intended audience for this fic is quite small indeed so please comment if you enjoyed it, I would love to hear from you! :)
> 
> my tumblr: [framboise-fics](http://framboise-fics.tumblr.com)
> 
> and there's a rebloggable photoset [here](https://framboise-fics.tumblr.com/post/173291123387/everyone-knows-not-to-touch-sansa-stark-because)


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